


We Were Born Sick

by mangochi



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Angst, Developing Relationship, Falling In Love, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-22
Updated: 2018-01-16
Packaged: 2018-02-14 07:08:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 28,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2182542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mangochi/pseuds/mangochi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world doesn’t stop turning when it ends, and there’s some sort of irony to be found in that if anyone bothers to look hard enough. Irony, or something. It’s the “or something” that the world seems to be held up on, but the sun keeps on rising each day and so do the dead. Dragging along on their rotting limbs, losing all notions of sunlight and warmth and left with nothing in them but the hunger for the lives they once had. </p><p>“Don’t cry for the dead, boy,” Leonard’s daddy told him when everything went to hell. “Faster t’ just point a gun between their eyes and pull the trigger.” Then he got bit when the farm was overrun and Leonard pointed the gun and pulled the trigger and didn’t cry until he saw he was too late to save his ma.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been thinking about writing this AU for a while and so, as a splendid misuse of the little time left before school starts, I have.
> 
> Warnings: Anything and everything that comes with zombies.

The world doesn’t stop turning when it ends, and there’s some sort of irony to be found in that if anyone bothers to look hard enough. Irony, or something. It’s the “or something” that the world seems to be held up on, but the sun keeps on rising each day and so do the dead. Dragging along on their rotting limbs, losing all notions of sunlight and warmth and left with nothing in them but the hunger for the lives they once had.

“Don’t cry for the dead, boy,” Leonard’s daddy told him when everything went to hell. “Faster t’ just point a gun between their eyes and pull the trigger.” Then he got bit when the farm was overrun and Leonard pointed the gun and pulled the trigger and didn’t cry until he saw he was too late to save his ma.

He sits there in the aftermath, covered in stinking blood, until the inevitable dawn lightens the horizon, and then he buries his family.

Turns out the South is both the best and worst place to be at the end of the world, and while there’s plenty of guns and people with balls enough to use them, there’s miles and miles of nothing but open land between cities, and the highways aren’t safe when traveling alone.

Leonard ends up joining a passing group of five that he doesn’t completely trust, and they look at him side-eyed in return, but they need a doctor and he needs to survive, and so they carry on together on a grudgingly built form of mutual respect.

“You got people out there?” the leader, Sanders, asks him one day. The rest of the group is crouched around a small fire in a clearing, cooking dinner enough for three days because the dead are more lively at night and flame draws them faster than anything not bleeding or yelling. Leonard’s startled by the sudden question; he keeps to himself and the others keep to their own unless they need him- it’s a simple and silent arrangement they’ve come to during the first few days.

Leonard glances at Sanders, weighing him carefully. He doesn’t know much about the man, only that he’s done some time, judging by the crude lines inked along his arms and the back of his shoulders. They’re hard to see, almost invisible against Sanders’ dark skin, but Leonard knows a prison job when he sees one. But he’s good, so far as Leonard’s seen, and fair, and he keeps Leonard from being eaten. These days, that’s enough to get someone in anyone’s good books.

“Sure,” Leonard says guardedly, and resumes poking at the leaves on the ground with a stick. He can smell the smoke from the campfire, hear the quiet murmurings of the others. Paul, Janice, Andy, Lisa. He knows their names and not much else, not about the people they’ve left behind or maybe who they’ve been left behind by. “Doesn’t everyone?”

Sanders is quiet for a moment, kicking his legs out in front of him so that he’s sitting beside Leonard rather than squatting. “I’m looking for my ma, myself,” he says, his voice rumbling deep in his barrel chest. “Ain’t seen her since I went in, couple of years back.”

Leonard doesn’t ask Sanders what landed him in prison. It seems like a stupid thing to fuss about after everything that’s happened, and it’s not like it’ll change a damn thing anyway. “My daughter,” he finally says, and he swallows hard. “Jo. My wife’s with her in Atlanta. Dunno if they’re gone or…” He stops there, because thinking it’s just as bad as saying it out loud, and doesn’t correct himself on calling Joce his wife. It’s another moot point, and right now, he just wants to know she’s alive and that she’s got his baby girl with him.

“Sorry,” Sanders offers a while, and Leonard starts to think that he’s all right, after all.

“Yeah, well. Me, too.” They watch the others put out the fire and pack up, and then they’re on their way again.

“Atlanta’s three days’ walk north from here,” Sanders tells him later that day, when they’re wading across a waist-deep creek and holding their backpacks over their heads. “Two if we hoof it.”

Leonard stares at him, and he dares to ask, “Can we?”

“Everyone’s got family,” Sanders says, and his grin flashes white in the gloom. “Ain’t too far out of our way to check on yours, Sawbones.”

It seems like talking to Sanders breaks some kind of dam, and Leonard finds himself engaged in small snatches of conversation throughout the day. He finds out that Janice’s father taught her the woods, skinny eighteen-year-old Andy’s got an engineering degree from online courses, Lisa’s looking for her husband in Charleston where he was stranded during a business trip, and Paul doesn’t like to talk.

“Leave ‘im alone, that one,” Sanders advises him on one occasion, when Paul gives Leonard a cursory glance after an attempt at conversation and walks faster to leave him behind. “He’s good with a gun and not much else.”

Leonard takes his advice and leaves Paul alone. God knows he has enough to deal with without this unfriendly neighbor dynamic going on.

They find a barn for the night and Leonard’s left with Janice and Lisa to secure the loft while Paul, Andy, and Sanders clear the perimeter. It’s funny, Leonard thinks distantly, that they speak in these terms now.

 _Before_ , the only thing he worried about securing was a parking spot in the morning. Now, he’s pulling ladders into haylofts, double-checking the hinges on the heavy doors and hanging up strings of empty cans across open windows and splintered wooden walls.

“Storm’s about to break,” Janice says as she kicks a clump of moldy hay off the loft and watches it drift down. “It’s a big one.”

“Your daddy teach you that?” Leonard asks, propping a flashlight up under the slanted roof and surveying the space. The air is a little warm and stuffy in the loft, but the floor seems to be in good shape and there’s plenty of room for the five of them to sleep.

“You can smell it coming,” she tells him, and now that she’s said it, Leonard can catch the edge of ozone in the muggy air.

Sure enough, he hears the first drops of rain in a few minutes, and then it’s coming down hard in heavy sheets, drumming steadily against the roof. The door heaves open and the other three men lurch in, soaking wet.

“It’s coming down hard out there,” Sanders gasps, pulling himself up the one ladder they’ve left standing. Andy follows suit, while Paul closes the door and pulls a chain through the handles. “Area looks clear of zombs.”

Leonard waits at the top of the ladder, ready to haul it up as soon as the last man makes it up. Paul’s near the top when his wet foot slips, and in the time it takes him to spit out a curse, Leonard’s reaching out to grab his wrist. Green eyes meet his, wide and startled and unguarded for a second, before Paul steadies himself and climbs the rest of the way up.

He doesn’t thank Leonard, and Leonard watches him for a second before shrugging to himself and dragging the ladder up. If nothing else, he just saved himself the trouble of splinting up a broken ankle.

The rain grows heavier as they huddle together around a lamp and spoon cold beans out of cans, gnawing on dried strips of the rabbit Sanders caught and roasted that morning. Andy jumps at the first rumble of thunder, and all of them flinch when lightning floods through the barn, the strike disturbingly close.

“We’ll be fine,” Lisa says out loud, her voice just managing to hold steady, and Leonard glances around at the rest of the group before looking back down and finishing his dinner.

“I’ll take first watch,” Sanders announces afterwards, and Leonard finds himself calling the first shift as well. “It’s a one-man job, doc,” Sanders says, amused, and Leonard shrugs.

“Can’t sleep with the storm, anyways,” he says, just as another loud crack splits the air and white light flashes through the cracks in the walls. Sanders gives him a searching look, then tips his head dismissively.

“Your loss.”

They turn off the flashlights and lamps when the others settle in to sleep, Andy curled up in a ball in the corner, Janice and Lisa forming two sensible nests beside him, and Paul lying a little distance away, shifting too restlessly to be truly asleep.

Sanders is a silent figure sitting against the wall, his rifle propped up across his knees and a blanket draped around his shoulders. Occasionally, Leonard will catch a glint in the darkness from the whites of his eyes, but otherwise, his companion is silent and Leonard sighs, pulling his knees up under his chin and closing his eyes.

He sits there and just listens, letting himself drown in the sound of the storm. He can hear the wind whistling, the rain, and he can almost pretend that he’s not sitting in a creaking barn, stomach gurgling with a near constant hunger and a gun within arm’s reach that he hates with every fiber in his being.

He doesn’t realize he fell asleep until the earth-splitting crack rends through the air, and he jerks awake, heart hammering and his skin tingling. The air is hot, and every hair on his body stands on end as everything seems to explode around him.

A flash of pain jolts through his forearm, and he grabs onto it without thinking, feeling something hot and dry and hard penetrating his skin. It’s a sizeable chunk of wood, and he rips it out before his mind can balk, feeling another ripple of agony throb up to his shoulder.

Someone’s yelling something, the words seeming to slow and blur in the suddenly thick air, and Leonard coughs out smoke. “Fire,” he croaks, and feels a hand seize his uninjured arm.

“Lightning strike!” Sanders shouts in his ear, and Leonard blinks up at him, realizing that it’s suddenly light enough for him to see. “Roof’s comin’ down, get down the ladder before-”

Another loud crack, and a rafter falls from the roof. Half of it’s engulfed in flame, and it hits the floor of the barn with a shower of sparks and a shattering crash. Leonard hears Sanders curse loudly before the man disappears, presumably to get the others to safety, and Leonard hauls his backpack close, slinging the strap over his shoulder and scrambling down the ladder. He slips a couple of times in his haste, dropping the last few feet and barely avoiding twisting something when he lands.

The fire’s between him and the door, and he looks back up towards the loft. He can barely see anything through the smoke, and he squints, wavering uncertainly. He won’t be much use to anyone going back up, but staying down here on his own isn’t looking too good, judging by the ominous noises coming from the roof. At this rate, the whole damn thing’s gonna come down on his head.

“Sanders!” he calls out, then ducks and covers his face as another beam quivers, breaking in half under the weight of the sagging roof. He can feel his eyebrows and eyelashes being singed, the heat of the fire pressing down around him, and he squints out from beneath his arm when he hears a loud, unnatural groan.

Half the beam’s sagging down onto the loft now, the planks straining and threatening to break beneath it, and Leonard falls backwards when it finally gives, the loft crashing to the floor.

“Lisa!” He pushes himself to his feet, choking on dust and smoke. “Andy!”

Two figures emerge, and he stumbles forward in relief when he sees it’s Sanders, slinging a dazed Andy alongside him. “Hey-”

“Take the kid,” Sanders orders, shoving Andy towards him. “Head for the window. Me and Paul got this- go!”

Andy pushes past Leonard and runs for the open window, and Leonard hesitates a split second. “Sanders-”

“ _Go_.” Sanders gives him a hard look, then turns and runs back towards the spreading flames. Another rafter shakes, sprinkling loose embers and ashes down on Leonard’s head, and he stumbles backwards, his hip catching the strings of cans still looped around the walls and clanging them together.

“Doc!” Andy’s urgent shout echoes in from outside, and Leonard shakes his head hard before pushing his backpack through the window, climbing out under it. It’s a tight fit, and he feels a few splinters working under his skin before he pops free and rolls onto the ground.

The sticky heat of the day has been all but completely washed away by the cold rain, and Leonard blinks water from his eyes as he wheels around, disoriented. The orange glow of the fire behind him throws illusive shadows on the wet grass, and in the distance, he can make out shambling figures straggling across the fields.

“Oi!” A hand clamps onto his elbow, and Andy yanks him backwards. “Watch out for the zombs, man!”

Leonard meets the kid’s terrified eyes and follows his gaze to the zombs making their way into the flickering light. God, there must be dozens of them, stumbling in from the northeastern portion of the surrounding woods.

“The fire,” Leonard says numbly, and he grabs onto Andy, turning him around. “We’ve gotta go, kid. Gotta get the others-”

Andy’s expression’s gone slack from fear, rainwater dripping into his open mouth as he clutches at Leonard. “Lisa,” he chokes out. “Janice. They-”

“Hey!” Leonard shakes him until Andy blinks at him. “Andy, work with me. Did you see them leave the barn? Sanders and Paul, did they-”

“N-No,” Andy stutters out, and then he blanches when he catches sight of something over Leonard’s shoulder. “Shit- shit, no-”

Leonard spins around and sees a zomb less than ten feet away, dragging one gruesomely twisted leg behind it as it limps towards them. Just the sound of its snarling turns Leonard’s blood cold, desperate rattling gasps drawn up from an emaciated chest and interjected with dry clacking teeth.

Andy’s thrashing in his grip and, during Leonard’s moment of distraction, slips free and runs.

“Andy!” Leonard yells after him. Shit, if he loses sight of the kid now-

The zomb is gaining fast, and Leonard trips away, lurching into a full-tilt sprint. Panic tears at his throat, thumping with every unsteady footfall. _So fucking many_ … He’s never seen so many before, and just thinking about it brings back flashbacks of the farm, how quickly it fell once the zombs started to swarm, the look in his ma’s eyes when she realizes-

He slips and falls, and the last thing he sees is a pair of dirty bare feet, one twisted around so that it’s almost backwards and the other so shredded that he can glimpse yellow bone.

There’s a wet crunching sound, and the feet disappear.

“Doc.”

Leonard pushes himself up, feels mud dripping from his chin as he stares up at Paul’s huge form. His square face is smeared with ash, one eyebrow completely gone and lending his expression a lopsided feel.

“The others,” Leonard starts.

Paul just shakes his head once and Leonard doesn’t have enough time to feel anything more than a pang of shock before a huge hand is wrapping around his elbow, hauling him to his feet.

“You’re hurt,” Leonard says, staring at the awkward way Paul’s standing, how he’s holding his weight on his right leg. “Is it-”

“I can run,” is all Paul says, and he pushes Leonard forward. “Let’s go.”

They take off towards the woods, circling around the fire to avoid the zombs approaching from the other side. Leonard takes the lead, glancing back to make sure Paul’s still there, but it’s clear the other man’s struggling with his leg. After a few seconds, Leonard curses and starts to double back, ready to drag the stubborn ass to safety if that’s what it takes.

And then a group of zombs come out of nowhere- creeps must have come from the woods on the other side- and they’re too close and Leonard’s too far and the fire is a blazing beacon in the middle of the darkness.

“Run,” Paul says, looking directly into his eyes, and Leonard just barely catches his words over the rain. “Run, Sawbones.” And then he’s gone, a dark figure struggling against the grip of more than ten zombs, and Leonard runs.

Paul doesn’t scream, a small mercy that makes Leonard want to double over and vomit, but he runs because it’s all he can do now, it’s the only thing a man like him can do, and his face runs wet with raindrops.

He doesn’t know how long he runs for, the fire roaring in his ears and the screams of Janice echoing in his chest, and every twig snatching and slicing at him is a pair of fleshless hands, every crackling branch the sound of snapping jaws. He puts his head down, lets the fear take over, and he runs and runs and he doesn’t cry for the dead, because it’s faster to put a gun to their heads and pull the trigger.

Except Paul didn’t get a gun. Or Sanders or Janice or Lisa or Andy-

_Run, Sawbones._

The rain is less once he makes it to the cover of the woods, but the leaves coating the ground are slick anyway, and every step slips and slides until Leonard finally misplaces his heel at the top of a steep slope and his feet skid out from beneath him. He lands hard on his back, knocking the air from his lungs, and feels himself beginning to slide down the slope.

“No, no-” Leonard grabs for a handhold, feels his backpack strap catch on something, and his heart lunges hopefully, but there’s a wet, tearing sound and then he’s falling.

………………..

“Hey.”

The voice is quiet, fading in and out of existence.

“Hey, you alive?”

If he’s dead, this is one hell of a rude awakening, Leonard thinks.

“Hey, you.”

Leonard frowns, feels his face twitch a little, and he cracks an eye open. Pain assaults him from all sides, his head throbbing with a vengeance and every inch of his body aching dully. His vision is blurry, sliding barely into focus just long enough for him to make out a silhouette above him.

He’s lying on his back, he realizes, staring up at the treetops. Sunlight filters in through the green leaves, creating a golden glow that he might have appreciated two months ago in a different world, a different lifetime.

The silhouette shifts, and Leonard blinks.

“Huh,” the guy standing above him says, prodding at his side with the toe of what feels like a boot, and Leonard flinches away without thinking, groaning painfully.

“Jesus, hell-” He hears a scuffling sound and wide blue eyes fill his vision- the color of the sky before the world went gray, Leonard thinks fuzzily. Maybe the color of the sky now, if he looks up.

“Hang in there, man. Sulu, we’ve got a live one!” His rescuer starts to get up and Leonard grasps for him feebly.

“Don’t…”

“You’re going to be okay,” the stranger tells him quietly, and Leonard blinks sluggishly, struggling to stay awake.

“You’re safe now,” is the last thing he hears.

_Like hell I am._

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which no one is entirely sane.

“Is he gonna live?” Jim rocks back on his heels and watches Spock poke knowingly at the unconscious man. “He looks pretty messed up.”

“He has not been bitten,” Spock tells him, in that oddly tilted cadence of his. His hand lingers on the man’s arm, on a dark stain that could be either mud or something worse. “However, he will require some measure of medical care.”

“Better get him to camp,” Sulu advises, crouching down next to Jim. “That fire last night attracted a lot of biters. We shouldn’t hang around.”

“Yup, gotcha.” Jim straightens and steps over the man’s legs. “Help me with the other side, will you?”

“His bag,” Sulu points, and they end up dragging the man between them, Spock holding the dirty backpack distastefully behind them.

The man gives a soft groan when his leg bumps over a rock, and Jim glances down at him distractedly. He can’t see much of the guy’s face, covered as it is with mud and stubble and floppy hair, and he can see the beginnings of a nasty bruise spreading across the side of his face.

“You think he’s got anything to do with the horde last night?” Sulu asks. “We passed that barn yesterday. Could be he’s with a group and they decided to hole up there for the night.”

“The architectural integrity of the building was unsound,” Spock says dismissively. “It would have been an unwise decision on their part.”

“What, you saying it’s natural selection?” Jim snorts. He’s never quite grown to like Spock, ever since he and Sulu picked the guy up at a research facility a couple of weeks ago. It’s not like the guy’s genuinely mean, he’s just…..weird in a way that seems to completely divert from Jim’s own particular brand of oddness. “That’s cold, man.”

“That’s survival,” Spock answers, and Jim finds that he doesn’t have a response. One that he wants to dish out right there and then, anyway.

They make it back to their camp and set the guy down on Spock’s sleeping bag- Spock makes a small sound at this, but doesn’t protest- and Jim proceeds to look through the stranger’s pockets.

“There’s something to be said about your morals here,” Sulu says dryly from his perch on a stump.

“Morals went out the window when the lights did,” Jim says dismissively. And it’s not like he’s robbing the guy, he’s just making sure their throats won’t be slit in their sleep. He doesn’t get that vibe from the man, though, despite all the shit that’s gone down these past couple of months. Just something about him, even though he’s filthy and bloody and passed out, makes Jim think that he’s not the type to kill his rescuers in cold blood.

Well, not that he’d even make it that far.

“Check his bag,” Jim calls over his shoulder, crouching at the man’s side to pat at his jacket.

“He’s got a gun,” he hears from Sulu a second later. “And ahhh. Looks like our man here’s a doctor. Got a first aid kit.”

“Good. That’ll be handy.” Jim fishes out an old lighter, a couple of crumpled, wistful receipts, and a stiff rectangle of folded paper that he pulls out from the man’s inside pocket. It’s still warm from his body heat, the creases a little worn from time, and he starts to open it curiously.

The man’s eyes flick open, and suddenly Jim’s wrist is engulfed in a large, bloodstained hand.

“ _Whoa_ -” he hears from Sulu, then a scramble and a series of clicks as every weapon in the camp- two guns and a sword- is cocked and leveled at the man on the ground. Jim has his own handgun out, though he keeps it by his side in a show of nonchalance.

“You all right?” he asks the man casually. The hand gripping his arm is shaking, he realizes, the man’s gaze sliding in and out of focus as he struggles to return to consciousness.

“I-” the man croaks, and hazel eyes lock onto Jim’s. “Who….?”

“I advise that you release our companion,” Spock says calmly, and the man’s head jerks to the side, like he’s just realized they weren’t alone. Jim glances up, more surprised at Spock’s use of ‘companion’ than anything else, and watches as Spock tips an eyebrow up.

The man’s hand falls from Jim’s wrist, though he thinks it’s due more to exhaustion than obedience, and he lets out a faint groan.

“You’re pretty banged up, mister,” Sulu says, approaching cautiously. He lowers his sword though, pointing it towards the ground rather than the stranger’s head. “Was it the biters?”

“Zombs,” the man mutters, his eyelids sagging, and Jim pokes his cheek a little to make sure he stays awake. He earns a glare for his trouble, those hazel eyes sparking to life briefly in irritation. “We…..we were in the barn.”

“Anyone else make it?” Jim asks.

Something flickers behind the man’s eyes, his expression twisting beneath the dirt and blood. “No. Got nothing left but my bones now.” He looks surprised at his own words and, to the shock of everyone present, he starts to laugh.

Sulu shuffles closer to Jim, bending low to whisper, “I think he’s lost it.”

“Maybe it’s temporary,” Jim whispers back hopefully. He’s seen people lose it pretty bad, some like this, some by crying, and he doesn’t know which he prefers.

Spock solves the problem by slapping the hell out of the guy before looking down irritably at his own hand. For someone stuck in the shithole of the apocalypse with the rest of them, Spock’s got a thing with getting his hands dirty that Jim doesn’t think he’ll ever understand.

The man shuts up immediately, blinking rapidly, and then he hiccups. “What the hell?”

“Well, I think we all got off on the wrong foot here,” Sulu says loudly. “Hikaru Sulu,” he adds, holding out a hand, and after a second, the man reaches up and takes it. Sulu pulls him to a sitting position, where the man sways briefly before balancing himself with his hands on the ground.

“Spock,” says Spock, and he doesn’t offer his hand.

“McCoy,” the man says after a short pause, and he looks around at Jim again, his gaze half apprehensive, half measuring. “Leonard McCoy.”

Jim stands and dusts off his pants and casually shoves his handgun back in his waistband. “Jim Kirk,” he says. “I think we’re all going to get along just fine, doc.”

………………..

Leonard tries to get a read on the three men who saved his life, but two hours later, he still has no idea who he might be dealing with and gives up.

Sulu seems pleasant enough, in a quiet, guarded way, and carries a sword, of all things, thrust through his belt. It’s one of the fancy, swishy ones, and Leonard can’t for the life of him imagine how he manages to keep zombs away with something that flimsy.

“It’s sturdier than it looks,” Sulu tells him when he catches Leonard glancing askance for the third time. “Besides, it’s mostly for show. _This_ , though.” A flash of silver and Leonard’s blinking down at an eight-inch blade beneath his chin. “This is the real deal.” Then he smiles mildly and sticks the knife back into its invisible hiding place.

Leonard makes a mental note to stay on Sulu’s good side.

Spock’s quiet in a completely different way, like he’s got plenty to say, but chooses to hold it back. Something about him irks Leonard inexplicably, and he spends the first hour of their acquaintance walking behind the man and eyeing his strangely formed haircut. 

“You’re headed north,” he remarks, and the leader, Kirk, snorts lightly.

“Good eyes, Bones,” he calls back, and Leonard tries not to jerk at the nickname. It cuts a little too close to home, and he tightens his hands on his backpack straps, forcing himself to speed up and walk next to the man. “I’ve got family in Atlanta,” he says. “I’d like to check up on them, see if they’ve evacuated or….” He stops there, because he’s not sure what to say, and swallows. “Or still there.”

“We’ll see,” is all the vague answer he gets, and Leonard slows again, staring disbelievingly at Kirk’s back as he forges ahead.

He’s not sure how old the man is, thinks he may be a few years younger than Leonard, but everyone looks older these days and survival’s got less to do with age now and more to do with how well you can handle a gun.

Of all the others in the ragtag group, Leonard’s got least of a hold on Kirk. He’s met guys like this before, loose cannons who can be smiling and laughing one moment and blowing up the next. Or withdrawing inside themselves and throwing up more walls than any psychiatrist can break down.

 _Whatever_ , he thinks disgruntledly. They’ve let him in and he supposes he should be grateful. His arm still hurts from where the wood pierced it, but he’s patched himself up as well as he can under the circumstances, though he’s now more aware than ever that he needs to stock up on his supplies. Maybe he can persuade Kirk to follow the highway in order to hit some pharmacies, and then maybe if they can make it all the way to Atlanta….

Part of him knows it’s stupid to even begin to hope that Joce and Jo are all right, that the odds are one in a million and he’ll most likely get himself killed, heading into a large city with the dead swarming everywhere.

But then he thinks about Joanna, and how she’s only eight years old and he can barely remember her smile, and he presses the photograph in his pocket closer to his heart and keeps going.

Seeing that photo in Kirk’s hand had shaken him- it’s as close as anyone’s gotten to seeing it, and somehow it feels like a loss if Leonard has even this taken away from him.

It’s another stupid thought, but nobody’s left to judge anymore, so he doesn’t give a shit.  

………………..

“Hey, Jim.” Sulu sidles over to sit beside Jim as he feeds another stick to the fire, careful to keep the flames low in case any biters are still lingering. They’ve gotten as far from the barn as they can in a day, and the woods here are quiet, relatively undisturbed. Spock’s busy setting up the perimeters, fixing wire up around waist level around the small clearing they’ve found for the night, and the new guy…

“You think the doc’s okay?” Sulu asks quietly, nodding over where the man’s sitting to himself just outside the circle of firelight, eyes fixed on something he’s holding in his hands.

Jim watches him, watches the way the man’s face softens as he looks down at whatever he’s holding, and thinks abruptly that a guy with a face like that can’t be bad. He wonders what he looks like without the beard, maybe with a haircut……

He shakes his head briskly and turns back to the canned soup he’s heating over the fire. “I think he’s as okay as anyone can be right now.”

“He’s lost his group.” Sulu settles down next to him, chin propped on his knees and his dark eyes glinting. “It’s not a good feeling.”

“I know.” Jim jabs a little too hard at the fire and stares gloomily as a log snaps and crumbles with a cascade of sparks. He and Sulu were in a larger group before this, maybe up to twenty, until the biters broke into the trailers and then that was that. The two of them barely got out alive, and though they didn’t know each other well before then, they had plenty of reason to get friendly in the days afterwards. Sulu’s the devil with a knife, and Jim knows guns and cars and together, they’ve managed to scrape by. Add on Spock and his encyclopedic knowledge on everything known to man and a little plus, and they’ve got some kinda dynamic going, all right.

And now they’ve got a doctor, provided he stays sane enough to treat them if anything goes sour.

“I’ll talk to him,” Jim says finally. “You happy?” He hands off his poking stick to Sulu, who takes it with something akin to a satisfied smirk, and goes off to comfort the doc. His front feels suddenly colder when he turns away from the fire, and he pushes his hands in his pockets, slouching down ungracefully beside the man.

“How you holding up, Bones?” The name falls easily from his lips, just as easily as it came to him the first time he said it. It’s a macabre name, maybe, especially considering current circumstances, but there’s no way in hell Jim can look at this guy and call him Leonard. Not after seeing the death in his eyes, the barely restrained sorrow and anger that Jim’s tempted to stoke like the campfire. He’s always had a knack for getting into things he shouldn’t.

Bones flinches a little, and whatever he’s looking at quickly disappears again. “Been better,” he answers shortly, shifting a little away from Jim.

Well, they can’t be having that now, not when they’re supposed to be getting all buddy buddy. Sulu’d never let him hear the end of it if he pissed off the new kid in class.

Jim scoots closer in retaliation, until their shoulders are pressed together. “So, Atlanta?”

He feels Bones stiffen against him and grins. Bingo. “What kinda family are we talking about? Cousin? Aunt? Grandma?”

“None of your business.”

“It’s my business if we go,” Jim says mildly, and he can practically hear the sound of Bones’ teeth grinding together before he obviously decides to play nice.

“My ex-wife,” Bones says, in that careful, deliberate way that makes Jim think the “ex” part is recent. “And my kid.”

“A boy?”

“Daughter.”

Jim opens his mouth curiously, but then Spock is back with the spool of wire and the conversation dies there.

“Soup’s up!” Sulu announces cheerfully, and everyone’s distracted by the prospect of hot food for a short while.

Later, Jim lies awake in his sleeping bag, even though Sulu’s got first watch, and listens to the steady sounds of Spock’s quiet, measured breathing from beside him. God, the man even _breathed_ perfectly. On the other side, Bones is all but silent, curled into a tight ball with just the top of his head showing, and Jim turns his head, watching the gentle rise and fall of the man’s back until the first touches of drowsiness grasp at his consciousness.

 _Atlanta_ , he thinks, just before he allows his eyes to close. _Well, it’s not that far out of the way_.

………………..

“Where are you headed, anyway?” Leonard asks, concentrating on setting one foot in front of the other. His scrapes and bruises hurt a little less today, despite the one splinter he can still feel just to the left of the back of his neck, but Kirk set out a fast and early pace this morning before the sun even rose, and his body’s still stiff.

“There has been word of a refugee settlement on the West Coast,” Spock says, and Leonard almost trips over a tree root.

“I’m sorry, did you say the _West Coast_?” he demands. “We’re in Georgia!”

Spock gives him a patient look, one like a kindergarten teacher would direct towards his particularly obtuse student. “Indeed.”

“How-” Leonard splutters. “You plan to walk there, is that it?”

“Forrest Gump did it, didn’t he?” Kirk asks as he passes them, with a grin that Leonard can’t determine the sincerity of.

“Forrest Gump didn’t have to wade through millions of the walking dead,” Leonard snaps. “You’re all crazy.”

“Atlanta’s about a couple of hours that way,” Kirk says, and he points off to the right towards where Leonard can barely see the highway in the distance. “You coming with?”

Leonard does stumble then, out of surprise, but he recognizes a bone tossed by fate when he sees one, and he follows along meekly as Sulu takes point, swiping at ferns with his fencing foil.

 _The West Coast_ , he thinks incredulously. _Ridiculous_. He suddenly imagines the four of them sprawled on some beach with cocktails and guns, picking off zombs crawling in from the surf, and his stomach gives a funny lurch of mingled horror and amusement.

He’s surprised when Kirk falls into step beside him, matching the length of their strides smoothly. “You’re thinking that we won’t make it, right?” Kirk asks him, his voice low. “Ye of little faith.” He sounds more entertained than reprimanding, though.

“It’s thousands of miles,” Leonard answers, dropping his voice to Kirk’s volume. “The odds are-”

“Fuck the odds,” Kirk says lightly, and he slaps Leonard’s back heartily. “We’re going to make it, Bones.”

The funny thing is, Leonard can almost believe it when it comes from him, this insane kid who smiles too much with his mouth and not enough with his eyes. “You’re one loony son of a bitch, Kirk,” he says, and this time, the grin touches the corners of those bright blue eyes.

“Call me Jim,” is all he says.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Jim causes an explosion.

They end up walking on the highway, because Leonard’s grown sick of the woods and Sulu starts complaining about getting sap on his sword, and also because a sense of false security starts cropping up after a couple of days of not seeing a single zomb.

“This is not a good idea,” Spock says, for the third time in fifteen minutes. “We should maintain cover in the woodland areas, avoid further exposure-”

“Aw, c’mon, Spock,” Jim says. He doesn’t quite sling an arm around his stiff companion, but he jostles their arms together and gives him a bracing look. “Thought you didn’t like the woods.”

“I appreciate its necessity,” Spock corrects. “I prefer to live.”

Jim snorts at that. “Don’t we all.”

Leonard largely ignores the repartee, which he’s beginning to suspect is normal for those two, and watches the signs they pass. Sulu’s run off on his own already, saying he’ll be back after he scouts out what’s ahead and leaving his pack and sword behind. At first, Leonard thought it was a form of reassurance, so that they’ll know he’ll come back, but Jim banished the theory when he bent and shouldered Sulu’s bag.

“Nah, it’s just so he can run faster. Lighter baggage, y’know? Here.” Then he tossed Leonard Sulu’s sword.

The foil hangs awkwardly from his belt, bouncing lightly against his leg with every step, and Leonard wonders how Sulu makes it look so effortless.

“I do not believe that-” Spock begins, and Leonard groans without thinking.

“Stick a sock in it, will you?” he grouches, then pauses, unsure if he’s overstepped some kind of boundary. But Jim’s grinning, Spock’s eyebrow twitching, and everything seems all right, after all.

The roads are cracked from the heat, faded and dusty from lack of maintenance, and carcasses of vehicles and their drivers alike increase in number as they near the city. Whole sections of the highway are completely clogged by cars, and Jim makes them walk alongside the grassy banks on the other side of the rail.

“Never know what could be hiding in that mess,” he says, gesturing at the tangle of frozen traffic. “You don’t want to get trapped in that when the biters come for you, trust me.”

Leonard looks at the cars, at the cracked windshields and smears of blood amongst shattered glass, and silently agrees.

The sun’s high above them by the time the skyline comes into view, and Leonard squints at the blurry silhouette in the distance. Jim stops beside him, dropping a hand on his shoulder, and Leonard starts, unsure if he wants to pull away. The kid’s awfully touchy-feely with a guy he just met, but then again, Leonard’s seen him with Sulu and Spock and it doesn’t seem like he’s getting any special treatment.

“You know where to find them?” Jim asks quietly, his breath stirring the hot air beside Leonard’s ear, and Leonard does brush him away then.

“Yeah,” he answers tersely. “I do.” He doesn’t think about the alternative.

Sulu returns shortly, a tiny figure jogging steadily towards them until he slows to a halt, barely breathing fast. “We’ve got trouble,” he says, then looks around until his eyes alight on his sword. “Ah, thanks, man.”

Leonard hands the foil over gladly and watches as Sulu straps it on. “How many zombs?”

“That term is not, strictly speaking, correct-” Spock begins.

“Gotta be at least fifty,” Sulu answers. “They’re dormant for now, don’t think any of them noticed me, but the exits are completely blocked. We’re going to have to enter the city another way.”

“That’s not gonna happen,” Leonard mutters, looking out darkly towards the city. “Too much open space. If the horde scents us out there, it’ll be near impossible getting to cover.”

“We need a diversion,” Jim says thoughtfully. “Something to draw the biters away from the main roads.”

“Well, I’m all out of forest fires,” Leonard says tetchily. “So unless you’ve got something else in mind-”

“That’ll do,” Jim interrupts, nodding past Leonard’s shoulder, and they all turn to follow his gaze.

“I’m not getting in that thing,” Sulu eventually says. “Especially now that insurance doesn’t exist.”

“Fascinating,” Spock offers unhelpfully.

“No,” Leonard vetoes. “No way, no-”

“ _Yes_ ,” Jim says, his eyes dancing.

………………..

“You ready?” Jim looks up expectantly, still grinning as he holds the two wires close. “God, this is gonna be fun.”

“I hate you,” Leonard says from beside him, but he doesn’t get out and Jim considers that a win.

“I have located the keys,” Spock announces from the backseat, holding up the jingling lanyard, and Jim takes that exact second to touch the wires together.

The cherry red Chevy convertible coughs dryly, then splutters and starts, and Leonard clutches at the dashboard incredulously. “It _worked_.”

“Told ya.” Jim pops back up, the top of his head dusty and his face flushed from the cramped confines beneath the steering column, and he settles into the driver’s seat. “Sulu, you good?”

“The roof’s not working,” Sulu says, jammed up in the back beside Spock, and Jim makes a dismissive sound.

“It’ll be fine,” he says, and he foots the gas. Leonard swears and grabs onto the seat belt when the car lurches forward, trying to pull the strap free from where it’s stuck around the headrest. Jim’s laughing his head off, the maniac, and Leonard offers a quick prayer up to no deity in particular as the Chevy suddenly reverses, bashing into the bumper of the car behind them before screeching around and taking off down the highway in a cloud of dust.

“ _Yeah_!” Jim yells beside him, his teeth bared in a feral grin and his eyes wide open as the wind roars around them. Leonard squints against the air buffeting his face, raising an arm to shield himself from the worst of it. He glances back once and catches a glimpse of Spock sitting stoically through the ordeal, his straight bangs flying straight up in the air, Sulu hunched down in the seat beside him and clutching his sword to his chest like a talisman.

The Chevy swerves suddenly to the left to avoid a car lying on its side, and Leonard swears he feels two wheels leave the road before dropping back down, his teeth clicking together painfully.

“Dammit, Jim!” he shouts, his heart hammering. “Slow down!”

“What’s that?” Jim calls over cheerfully, and Leonard curses when he sees silhouettes in the distance. Sulu was right- there have to be fifty zombs stranded across the highway, packed too closely to drive through and too many to sneak around undetected.

“Here’s your stop,” Jim says abruptly, and he slams on the brakes. Leonard’s head would have gone through the windshield if he didn’t have a death grip on his seat belt, and his ass bounces off the seat with a jolt. They’re maybe a hundred yards away from the horde, and an exit ramp lies to their right, leading into downtown Atlanta.

“See you at the rendezvous point,” Jim says, as Leonard and Sulu scramble out of the car. Leonard meets his gaze, startled by the sudden serious note in the other man’s voice, and Jim nods at him once with a twitch of his mouth. “We’ll lead the biters on a merry chase, yeah?”

The last thing Leonard sees before Sulu pushes him down into a crouch and ushers him behind cover is Spock gingerly sliding into the passenger seat.

The first chords of some AC/DC song start blaring as someone starts fiddling with the radio, and Leonard flinches involuntarily when he hears a faint rattling and groaning in the distance as the zombs start taking notice.

Sulu squeezes his arm, and Leonard glances up apprehensively. “Should we….”

“They’ll be fine,” Sulu says, his voice low, and he puts a hand on Leonard’s back, urging him further down the ramp. “We’ll meet them in a couple of hours like we said. At the ferris wheel, remember?”

“Yeah,” Leonard says, and he lets Sulu tug him away from the lonely Chevy in the middle of the road.

………………..

“The doctor,” Spock says, somehow managing to sound serene and unperturbed despite the biters lurching after them. “Do you believe that he will find his family?”

“Hmm?” Jim glances back distractedly at the biters, decides he’s going too fast, and slows down again to let the horde catch up again. They’re nearing a wider part of the road now, where it opens up to six lanes, and he prepares himself to double back once the biters are through.

“Dr. McCoy,” Spock repeats. Jim can feel Spock’s eyes on the side of his face, and he looks into the rearview mirror to avoid meeting the scientist’s gaze. “You are aware that the possibility of finding his family alive and well-”

“He’ll find them,” Jim says, and he stomps on the wisp of doubt in the back of his mind. Damn Spock and his ability to break through a man’s insecurities with a few calculated words. “Now shut up and keep an eye on the biters.”

Spock doesn’t say anything, which is the one good thing about the guy. He knows when to retreat from a confrontation, if only because he’s biding his time for a more opportune moment.

The last of the horde makes it into the wider lanes, and Jim tightens his grip on the steering wheel. They’re swiftly approaching a makeshift barricade of cars, the trailing end of what remains of an evacuation. “You ready?”

Spock’s only response is to zip his jacket up over his backpack, which he’s slung over to rest on his stomach, and pull his arms inside his sleeves like a turtle.

Jim grins humorlessly, bends down to pick up the brick by his foot, and sets it on the gas pedal. The Chevy begins to accelerate, and Jim grabs his bag, vaulting over the side door. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Spock doing the same, and then his right shoulder rams against the road with a sickening crunch.

He barely has time to register the white flare of pain before he’s rolling and rolling and rolling, breathless and wheezing when he finally skids to a stop on his side. He hears a distant crash as the Chevy rear-ends the back of a truck with a jolting crash, setting off a wailing alarm that’ll draw every biter within a mile.

Jim’s ears are ringing when he pushes himself up unsteadily, his vision blurring slightly before he blinks and shakes his head to clear it. The biters are coming fast, he needs to move before they reach the Chevy, but his limbs are heavy and useless, his head throbbing dully.

Spock’s face looms in his vision, a trickle of blood dripping from a scratch above his eyebrow, and Jim hisses when Spock grabs his arm too hard.

“ _Careful_ , man. Jesus-” He sucks in a harsh breath when Spock efficiently wrenches his shoulder back into place with a sickening pop. “ _Fuck_.”

“Come,” Spock says briskly, raising to his feet and shading his eyes as he looks down the highway. “There isn’t much time.”

Jim grits his teeth and forces himself to his feet, wincing as stinging scrapes and bruises make themselves known, but the sight of the approaching biters sends a rush of adrenaline through his veins and he grabs his bag, following Spock over the guardrail and into the undergrowth beneath the slope. Behind them, the Chevy’s started to burn, a heavy smell of gasoline oozing into the air, and the biters are making their way steadily towards it.

Two hours, Jim thinks, as he and Spock creep quietly around the horde. _Better hurry, doc._

………………..

Leonard tries not to gag from the nauseatingly sweet rot rising from the bursting bags beneath his feet, his hands clamped over the lower half of his face as he attempts to avoid touching any of the sticky Dumpster walls.

“Are they gone?” he whispers, his voice nasally and muffled, and Sulu raises the lid of the Dumpster a couple of inches with the hilt of his sword, squinting out into the alley.

“Yeah, looks like it.” Sulu opens the lid the rest of the way and vaults up to perch on the edge, head swiveling around before he drops down silently.

Leonard climbs out of the Dumpster with considerably less grace and wrinkles his nose at the clinging smell of garbage on his clothing. It’s the third time they’ve had to wriggle into hiding now, Sulu’s hand pressing Leonard’s head down as biters shuffle past, groaning and rattling and bumping up blindly against the Dumpster.

“We’re close,” Leonard says, keeping his voice low, and Sulu nods, gesturing for him to follow as he leads the way back to the streets.

It gave Leonard a start when they first entered the city, and he saw it for the first time since the fall of civilization. Cars lie in wreckage in the open streets, some turned over, some simply empty, some splattered with blood and worse. Shattered glass litters the pavement from broken window displays, shards of bricks from entirely destroyed buildings. They happen upon the empty shell of a tank, half buried inside what used to be a Bank of America, and Leonard stares blankly at the crinkled bills blowing in the desolate wind.

“There,” he says, pointing at an apartment building. “Fourth floor.”

Sulu nods and beckons him to the side street, where he jumps up and catches the bottom rung of the fire escape. The ladder rattles down, the rusty clanging making Leonard jump, and he scrambles up quickly after Sulu. His muscles are burning by the time they reach the fourth floor, and he crouches on the narrow landing while Sulu peers inside a grimy window. “All clear,” he says, before bundling his sword in his jacket and using it to smash the glass.

They climb through into a dark sitting room, the air musty and overheated. The air smells of rotten food and coppery blood, the carpet suspiciously sticky under Leonard’s shoes, and he moves quickly through the room, trying not to look too hard at anything. Sulu grabs at the edge of his jacket to slow him down, shouldering forward to take the front position.

“What the hell?” Leonard whispers, perhaps a little too harshly. But Sulu doesn’t look perturbed, merely shrugs and pushes a door open for him with his foot.

“Jim wanted me to keep an eye on you,” is all he says. “And you’re not much of a fighter, are you, doc?”

“I can take care of myself,” Leonard says stiffly. He’s a dead good shot with a rifle, not so good with the handgun in his waistband, but still good enough to take out a zomb from within fifty yards.

“But you don’t like to.”

He can’t argue with that, not really, and so he lets Sulu lead the way into the hallway.

The lights are out, naturally, and a sickly stream of sunlight drifts in from the far window at the end of the hall. A couple of the apartment doors are cracked open, and Leonard doesn’t look at those, keeps his eyes fixed on 406, the second to last door on his right.

It’s closed, and he tries to take it as a good sign as he stands before it, his world narrowing down to this single moment. There’s no noise from behind the door, and he wonders bizarrely if he should knock.

Leonard glances back at Sulu helplessly, and the man gives him an encouraging nod. Leonard catches glimpse of his hand tightening on the hilt of his sword, though, and he takes a deep breath. He looks down at his own hand, his knuckles white where he’s gripping the latch, and places his other hand on the butt of his gun.

 _You can’t ever be too sure_ , he thinks, despite himself, and he opens the door.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Leonard doesn't cry.

Jim sighs and kicks at the seat in front of him, watching it ease back and forth slowly. “Bored.”

“Stop that,” Spock says mildly, glancing up at him before returning to his guard post at the base of the ferris wheel.

“Mmm.” Jim hops onto the seat and squints off speculatively into the distance; he can make out the roof of the aquarium from here, and he wonders absently what happened to the dolphins. “They’re late,” he says, trying and failing to achieve a nonchalant tone. “Why d’you think they’re late?” He tries not to think of Sulu and Bones trapped in an alley, biters clawing for them through a chain link fence, grabbing at ankles, hair, clothing.

He thinks it anyway, and he curses himself thoroughly.

Spock opens his mouth, and Jim stops him with a snort. “Never mind.” He settles for rocking back and forth on the seat, wishing he has something more substantial than the Beretta on him. Spock has a Glock, the bastard, and Jim’s been wanting to make a joke with that since the day they met. The timing never seems right, though, and Spock has the kind of face that discourages any attempt at humor.

“We shouldn’t linger,” Spock says, turning away from Jim. “If Dr. McCoy and Mr. Sulu do not return within ten minutes, I suggest that we leave.”

Jim stares at his back, his hand clenching where it rests on his knee. “You’re right,” he mutters, but there’s no heat in it. “Damn you for it.”

Spock doesn’t say anything, and they both wait in the desolate city.

Jim spends the time swinging lazily, head tilted back and staring up through the struts of the ferris wheel. The seats at the top sway in the wind, and he listens to the haunting sounds of their distant creaking. Spock’s a ramrod statue, standing guard even though he can barely aim a gun. His mind is his strong point, his ability to glance at a blueprint or map and draw it perfectly, his errorless calculations of their chances of survival. The latter is fairly irritating, but legitimate, and Jim’s long since given up on trying to figure out how the guy does it.

Eight minutes later, Spock starts glancing back at him again, and Jim pretends not to notice. _Hurry, Sulu_ , he thinks grimly. Then he thinks about Bones, and what if-

“Jim!” The call sounds awkward, like someone trying to whisper and shout at the same time, and Jim looks over his shoulder to see Sulu running towards him. Bones is right behind him and they both look in one piece, but the look on Bones’ face, and Jesus, they’re alone.

Jim stands, hearing Spock come up behind him. “You all right?” he demands, as soon as the other two are within hearing distance, and he’s listening for Sulu’s answer, but watching Bones’ eyes. A lot can be told from a man’s eyes, and Bones has the most vulnerable eyes Jim has ever seen in a world this hard and mad. _Doesn’t mean he’s weak_ , he reminds himself. There’s a difference wider than the ocean between the two.

“We’re fine,” Sulu assures him, blinking sweat from his eyes as he coughs dryly and catches his breath. Bones hands him a water bottle silently, his own eyes downcast as he wipes a sleeve across his face. “I see you dealt with the horde.”

“Eh,” Jim says vaguely. He watches Bones take the bottle back and drink deeply, his throat working in hard, audible swallows.

“I sense that the operation did not follow through as expected,” Spock says from behind him, and Jim wants to punch him. The look that Bones gives Spock tells Jim he wants to do much worse.

“They weren’t there,” Bones bites out, and he kicks the ferris wheel in a tight fit of anger. The blow echoes dully, and Jim winces surreptitiously, but Bones doesn’t let the pain show through. Not the physical pain, anyway.

Sulu shakes his head slightly when he catches Jim’s eye, and Jim decides to put the matter away for a later time.

“Let’s get out of here,” he says, turning towards Bones. “Unless you…..?” He’s not sure what he’s offering- some closure, maybe, another trip down memory lane- but Bones scowls down at the ground and says nothing.

“All right,” Jim says, when the silence stretches on, and he starts walking. His shoulder throbs with every shift of his body weight, a dull pang that pulses along his entire side and grips tight at the base of his spine. He’s probably torn something as well, he thinks grimly. That stunt with the Chevy probably wasn’t his best idea, though he’d do it all over again before admitting it to Spock, who complained passively in his ear the entire way here as he helped Jim limp through the streets.

A hand catches his elbow, and he loses his concentration, his knee giving out on the next step and sending him toppling forward.

“Jesus Christ,” Bones mutters, and he hauls Jim back up, grabbing him around the waist. Jim wheezes and blinks, his face bumping against Bones’ shoulder, and he finds himself breathing in the smell of dust and sweat. “What happened to you, kid?”

“Later,” Jim says, and he pushes away, feeling oddly unbalanced without Bones pressed against his side. “Gotta get out of the city first.”

“We won’t make it out before nightfall,” Bones points out. “Not on foot.”

“Well, hell, it’s your fault we’re here in the first place!” Jim snaps, the pain snapping his already thin strand of patience. “What do you suppose we do then, huh?”

“Seek high ground,” Spock suggests. “Preferably a securable location.”

“There’s a mall somewhere around here,” Sulu says dubiously. “Gotta be, anyway.”

“The aquarium,” Bones says tersely. He’s still staring at Jim, and Jim pointedly looks away. “Used to be a food court there, and a gift shop. We could set up camp there for the night- unless you’ve got any better ideas, of course.” He aims this last statement directly at Jim, who shrugs with his good shoulder and gives a humorless smile.

“You’re the boss,” he says blandly, and Bones flinches a little before steeling himself.

“C’mon, then,” Bones mutters, and they go.

………………..

The aquarium doors are covered with a metal grate, which Leonard considers as a promising and also ominous sign. On the one hand, nothing seems to have been broken into, and on the other side of that same hand, the niggling thought that nothing seems to have broken out, either, bothers him quietly.

Sulu insists on being the first one to go over, claiming he’s the lightest and fastest and, “Not going to lie, doc, you look like shit. And Spock can’t shoot.”

“I can shoot,” Spock says, his eyebrows furrowing.

“I could-” Jim starts, and Sulu gives him a look.

“Get your shoulder sorted out first,” he says, and then he scales the fence like a monkey and drops down on the other side. “Be back in ten.”

Leonard stares as Sulu disappears around the corner of the building, then turns to Jim. “Is he always like this?”

“So far as I know,” Jim says, his voice clipped, and Leonard narrows his eyes. He sees the way the kid’s holding himself, trying to pass off his posture as an awkward crossing of his arms, his face ashen and the corners of his mouth pulled tight.

“God help me,” he mutters, annoyance battling with professional pride. “You’ve got the martyr complex of a goddamn saint.”

Jim stares at him for a long moment, then cocks his head. “Didn’t know those existed.”

Leonard’s spared from the indignity of having to make a response when Jim turns wrong and winces. Concern takes over then, and Leonard drops his backpack, jerking his head silently at Spock as he bends to rummage through his things.

He’s a bright one, Spock, despite his tendency to annoy Leonard to hell, and the man trots over to grip Jim’s good arm, keeping him from running away.

“I’m fine,” Jim complains, watching apprehensively as Leonard straightens with his kit. “What’s that?”

“I’m getting real tired of hearing that,” Leonard informs him testily, snapping the plastic box open. “Take your shirt off.”

“Not on the first date. Spock, tell him-”

“Spock,” Leonard says plaintively at the same time, and they both look at the scientist expectantly. Spock blinks at them slowly, then apparently decides to take the third route.

“It would be best to administer to these injuries in a safer locale,” he says. “I advise that we wait for Mr. Sulu to return before baring ourselves to unnecessary danger.”

“See?” Jim says triumphantly, and Leonard resists the urge to punch him out, Hippocratic Oath be damned.

Leonard takes a deep breath and pulls himself together.

“At least let me sling it,” he says, trying to sound reasonable. “Don’t want you to strain it any more than you already have.”

Jim peers at him dubiously, but then nods, and Leonard pulls a spare shirt out of his backpack. It’s an old, frayed button down that’s seen better days, and he makes a rudimentary sling out of it, using the sleeves to tie a knot behind Jim’s neck.

“This is stupid,” Jim complains, staring down at where his arm is now bound against his chest.

“It’ll be more stupid when you end up hurting yourself again,” Leonard snaps. “What the hell did you do to it, anyway?”

“Spock fixed it,” Jim says defensively, as Spock answers simultaneously, “A dislocated shoulder, doctor, and I presume the presence of minor contusions and abrasions.”

“Traitorous jackass,” Jim says, but has the grace to look abashed when Leonard levels a disapproving glare at him.

“Once we’re safe,” he starts, and Jim’s dignity is spared some damage when Sulu reappears again, this time from the other corner of the building. He runs up to the gate and fiddles with the chain holding it shut, unlooping it from the bars and pushing the grate aside.

“Outside is clear,” he says, as they squeeze through the narrow gap. “Not so sure about the inside, though. Tinted windows.”

“No broken glass,” Jim points out. “Means it’s either empty or the creeps are just standing around inside. Keep it quiet either way.”

The doors are locked, but Jim bends down and picks it in about two seconds flat. Leonard refrains from asking where he picked up a skill like that, then decides he’d rather not know. There’s still a certain kind of bliss to be found in ignorance.

The air that spills out from the open door is stale and overly warm. Leonard doesn’t like the look of it, like some dark maw opening up to the unknown beyond, but this was his own idea in the first place, and so he squares his shoulders, draws his gun, and leads the way in.

It takes him a few seconds to recognize the corridor leading to the food court, one exit sign still flickering feebly at the end of the hall. The system must be running on the last dregs of its emergency reserve, he thinks, and wonders if anything else is still working. He’s been to the aquarium a couple of times before, with Jo- the thought sends a shudder of pain through him, and he actually halts.

Jim runs into him, cursing softly as the impact inevitably jolts his arm. “What the hell, Bones?”

“Stop calling me that,” Leonard says. He keeps going and doesn’t look to make sure that they’re following.

“I’ve never been to an aquarium before,” he hears Jim remark from behind him, and Spock murmurs an incoherent response, followed by a quiet snort from Sulu. Leonard shakes his head, tightens his grip on his handgun, and uses it to nudge open the double doors at the end of the hallway.

 _What kind of a kid’s never been to an aquarium?_ Leonard ponders, peering skeptically inside the door. Something suddenly shifts in the shadows, and he rears back on instinct just as a skeletal hand shoots out, grasping blindly at the open door. The door clangs shut, slamming against the zomb’s flailing arm.

He hears Jim curse, then Leonard finds himself being dragged backwards by his backpack, stumbling to a stop against a solid pillar that turns out to be Spock. Sulu’s first to the door, kicking it open, and in a blur of steel, the zomb’s wet rattling cuts off short and he hears a thump on the other side of the door.

“Stay with Spock,” Jim barks at him, pulling a knife out from a hidden sheath that Leonard hasn’t even noticed yet, and he disappears through the doors alongside Sulu.

“That idiot,” Leonard starts, thinking of what kind of damage Jim’s going to do to that bum shoulder he’s pretending he doesn’t have, and Spock’s hand closes firmly around his arm.

“We will wait here,” he says, as seriously and deliberately as if he’s proclaiming some sort of death sentence. In a way, maybe he is.

Leonard shakes off his grip and scowls helplessly at the closed doors. “We shouldn’t split up.” He’s seen enough horror movies to know how this ends- hell, they’re all living one right now. “This is how people die, dammit.”

“The corridor is secure,” Spock points out. “The door opens outwards.”

Leonard splutters, but it’s a fact he can’t exactly argue, and so he settles down against a wall with a disgruntled noise. “I don’t like this,” he makes sure to point out, and Spock gives him a long-suffering look.

A few minutes later, the door clatters and both of them jump, though Leonard has a feeling Spock would deny it to his dying breath.

Then Jim’s head pops through, grinning like a skull. “Coast is clear.”

Leonard scrambles to his feet, scowls to cover up the fact that he nearly pissed his pants, and steps gingerly over the body sprawled behind the door.

The food court is dark, but he can make out a beam of light farther in from where Sulu’s waving a flashlight around.

“All the exhibits above ground level are sealed off,” Jim explains, following up behind him and Spock. “Metal gates and all. Don’t think there’s anything fishy over there.” He points vaguely in the direction of a corridor to their left. “Pun intended.”

“And there?” Leonard asks, ignoring the feeble joke as he points to another corridor. “That’s an exhibit there, isn’t it?”

Jim shrugs dismissively. “Just a couple night staff biters, like that one back there. Feel free to go poke around if you like; it should be safe enough for you.”

“I will,” Leonard snipes, out of sullenness than anything else, and he strides off towards the corridor. Behind him, he hears what sounds suspiciously like a smack and a muffled, “Ow,” but doesn’t look back to check.

The first doorway he comes to is open and unsecured, and Leonard points his own flashlight in uncertainly. The most mundane of things gives him a start when illuminated in stark light against darkness, and a potted plant lying on its side nearly gives him a heart attack before he recognizes it and moves on with a snort.

It’s a short hallway leading to another room, this one with a muted glow streaming in from around the corner, and Leonard looks in tentatively.

It’s a large chamber, lit dimly by a grimy skylight over the massive wall-to-wall tank. The glass and water filter the light into a dull brown glow, shifting shadows roiling across the floor. At first, Leonard thinks the tank is empty, except for a few pieces of unidentifiable debris drifting through the murky water.

One of the larger pieces is a carcass, he realizes with a sour taste. The rotting remains of what used to be a great white shark, floating aimlessly along the dirty glass. Leonard can make out flaps of skin, a flash of cartilage, blood in the water giving it its coppery tint.

It’s the only thing in the tank, which is too large to have been intended for only one animal, and when Leonard realizes what must have happened, he finds himself swallowing around a lump in his throat, his eyes burning and that awful feeling arising in his sinuses. It strikes him as morbidly funny; the world’s ended, everyone’s dead or halfway there, and he’s standing in the middle of an abandoned aquarium crying over a goddamn dead shark.

He doesn’t hear the quiet footfalls behind him, not until Jim’s standing right by his side.

“You’re a big softy, aren’t you,” Jim says, his head tipping back as he considers the tank, and Leonard snorts halfheartedly, scrubbing at his face.

“It’s not what you think,” he says, because it isn’t. It’s less about the shark than what the shark’s done. It’s eaten every last one of its companions in the tank, come out on top as the last survivor, and now it’s dead anyway, just another rotting corpse in the ocean blue water. It never stood a chance, and if a shark can’t survive this world, what kind of a chance does Jo stand?

“They weren’t there,” Jim says quietly, and Leonard bites the inside of his cheek. “Were they?”

Leonard inhales sharply, and then he’s back in the apartment, staring at the trashed interior.

_The coffee table’s flipped over, glass all over the floor, picture frames knocked from the walls or hanging crookedly. “No,” he breathes, and he feels Sulu at his back, a hand on his elbow._

_“There’s no blood,” Sulu tells him, and Leonard tries to see that, tries to calm down. His breaths are coming faster, and then suddenly he’s sitting on the floor, Sulu pushing his head down between his legs. “Breathe, doc, come on. There’s no blood, see? They could still be-”_

_“Jo,” Leonard chokes out, black spots swirling at the edges of his vision. “Jo, Joce-”_

_“Hey.” Sulu’s hand suddenly clenches on the back of his neck, and the change in his tone has Leonard raising his head, his shoulders sagging under the weight of a thousand nightmares come to light. “Doc. Look at this.”_

“Hey.” Something warm brushes against the back of his hand, and Leonard flinches automatically. Jim pulls his hand away after a heartbeat, and Leonard feels an odd pang at the withdrawal before he smothers the feeling and crosses his arms, clearing his throat.

“You should be resting,” he says, turning away from the tank. Away from Jim. “Before you bust your arm up for good. I’m almost out of painkillers.”

“Nah, it’s good. I’m allergic to one of those, I think.”

“What?” Leonard demands, incredulity overtaking the sudden awkward turn, and he spins around. “What are you allergic to?” He slaps himself mentally for not asking this sooner. Just because civilization’s fallen, doesn’t mean he’s lost his license.

“Dunno,” Jim says vaguely, and Leonard’s about to tear him a new one, shoulder be damned, when Sulu pops his head in through the door.

“Spock’s found dinner,” he says, then hesitates, his eyes flitting between them. “Everything okay in here?”

“Just looking at the sharks,” Jim says lightly, turning towards the door until Leonard can no longer make out anything more than the edge of his face. “I’ve never seen one before.”

“They’re more impressive alive,” Sulu points out, and Jim shrugs, the movement made awkward by his makeshift sling.

“I’ve settled for less,” he says, and he heads for the door. He doesn’t look back at Leonard and Leonard glances back up at the floating carcass one last time before he follows Jim out.

………………..

“Why did we come to Atlanta?” Sulu asks, his voice quiet, and Jim doesn’t answer. He does look over, though, and Sulu looks back steadily, his head propped on his knees.

The food court was mostly raided, but they managed to find a few bags of chips under the counter, some warm Gatorade bottles and slightly soft nachos. It’s no gourmet feast, but it’s still the most food Jim’s seen in weeks. Spock insisted on putting some aside, like some kind of severe squirrel, but they made the best out of the nachos and passed around a bottle of Gatorade, and the energy drink was like wine on Jim’s tongue.

Sunset’s come and passed now, the aquarium gone dark, and Jim can barely see the sleeping silhouettes of their companions, Spock lying flat on his back on a padded bench while Bones occupies a round niche beneath a bubble of glass overlooking the main tank.

“You tell me,” Jim finally says. “What happened at Bones’ place, Sulu?”

“S’ none of my business,” Sulu mumbles, looking distinctly uncomfortable with the whole subject. “They weren’t there, though, can say that for sure. Probably haven’t been since this all started.”

Jim sighs, and though it’s not much more than what he already expected, he still feels a tug of sympathy towards the newest member of their group. “How’d he take it?”

“About how you’d expect,” Sulu says dryly. “Can you blame him?” His eyebrows lower soberly. “Seriously, Jim. We took a huge risk coming here.”

“It’s gone all right so far,” Jim says evasively.

“Jim.”

“I felt bad, okay?” Jim snaps defensively.

Bones grunts and twitches in his sleep, and Jim lowers his voice deliberately. “I felt bad,” he says again, quieter this time. “And we need him, right? He’s a doctor. Can’t be that many of them left around these days, and Spock’s not exactly the healing touch kind.”

“Hmm.” Sulu doesn’t seem quite satisfied, and to be honest, Jim’s not really either.

“There was a map,” Sulu then says, and Jim glances sharply at him.

“A map?”

“Yeah. In the apartment.” Sulu shifts his weight, clearly not completely at ease with sharing the news, and Jim fixes him with his thousand-yard stare until Sulu sighs resignedly. “Shouldn’t really be telling you this.”

“But you’re going to,” Jim says, and it isn’t a question.

“Only because I know the doc won’t.”

“Why do you call him that?” Jim asks unthinkingly, and Sulu glances at him in surprise.

“He’s a doctor, isn’t he?”

“He’s got a name,” Jim says.

“You call him Bones,” Sulu points out, and Jim pauses, because he hasn’t really thought about it before.

“He looks like a Bones,” is his final, decidedly inconclusive answer, and Sulu snorts softly.

“Well, he looks like a doc to me,” he replies. “Anyway, this map.” His fingers tap nervously on his kneecap, then sketch out an invisible contour in the air. “It highlighted the local highways, with one route marked out.”

“You think that’s where his wife and kid went?” Jim asks dubiously. He glances at Bones’ sleeping form, curled up into a ball on the far side of the room. “Bit of a long shot, don’t you think?”

Sulu shrugs, his expression carefully mediated. He’s got a better poker face than Spock sometimes, and Jim both appreciates and hates the way he can’t get a complete read on either of them. “Maybe. I think he’ll try and find them, though.”

“You can’t think-”

“Doesn’t matter what I think.”

They both sit in silence for a couple of minutes, mulling it over.

“It’d be nice if he did,” Sulu says quietly.

“Nobody can afford charity these days,” Jim says. “We can’t all go on some wild goose chase.”

“They’re not geese,” Sulu argues. “They’re his family.”

Jim scoffs, plucking angrily at the frayed carpet. “ _Family_.” He can feel Sulu watching him, and if there’s anyone better than Spock at guilt-imposing stares, it’s Sulu.

“Yeah. Look, Jim, I know you-”

“Shut up,” Jim says, leaning back heavily against the wall. “We’ll go, all right? You happy?”

“As long as you are,” Sulu says, as agreeable as always, and Jim sighs.

“You’re a real bastard.”

“Takes one to know one.”

Jim rolls his eyes, but he’s feeling mollified already. “You should go ahead and turn in,” he says. “I’ll wake Spock in another hour.”

“Nah, you go. Doc told you to rest that shoulder.”

“Traitor,” Jim mumbles, but his shoulder does hurt, and he’ll be damned if he gives Bones the satisfaction of gloating when he’s rendered useless in the morning. He stands uncomfortably, feeling his back and neck pop as he straightens. “Wake me in a couple of hours, will you?”

“Of course,” Sulu says, with the exact tone that tells Jim he won’t be doing anything of the sort, but that’s exactly why Jim likes him.

He finds a spot between Spock and Bones, turned towards the latter and watching the dark curve of his back against the faint glow of the glass tank. He’s gotta keep an eye on him, he decides drowsily. Who knows what the hell Bones will try to pull, if he thinks it’ll get him closer to his family.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Leonard runs.

When Jim wakes, he immediately senses that something’s wrong.

He lies there for a few seconds, just breathing, staring incomprehensibly at the empty patch of carpet in front of him before he realizes what he’s looking at. Or rather, who he’s not.

“He’s gone.” The voice is quiet, even, and Jim sits upright, blinking in the dim light. Weak sunlight streams in through the few windows, giving everything a grayish hue. Spock looks like a washed out version of himself from where he sits at one of the tables, watching Jim with his unreadable eyes. Sulu’s nowhere to be seen, and neither is Bones. “He left this morning. Mr. Sulu has gone against my advice and left in pursuit. ”

Jim stands and crosses the space between them in two furious strides, reaching out and grabbing the front of Spock’s shirt recklessly. “Where is he?” he demands, his heart racing. Fuck, there’s no way Bones can make it on his own out there, especially not if he’s half blind with some harebrained idea of finding his family in the wilderness. “Damn it, Spock, why didn’t you-”

“Dr. McCoy desired to leave us,” Spock says, regarding Jim with about as much interest as he would a crack in the sidewalk. Even when confronted by biters, Jim’s never seen the man so much as flinch or blink twice, and it’s frustrating as hell. “I saw no particular reason to hold him back.”

Jim curses and shoves Spock away, disgusted. Spock straightens calmly, smoothing the rumpled fabric where Jim seized his shirt.

“It was a logical decision on his part,” Spock says. “If a poorly thought out one. The odds of his survival-”

“He’s gone to find them,” Jim says, ignoring Spock. “He’s gone to find his goddamn family.”

The doors burst open and Jim looks up sharply, hope racketing up his throat. But it’s Sulu, panting and worried as he skids to a halt and doubles over, catching his breath. “Jim- he’s gone- I couldn’t catch up.”

“Shit!” Jim runs his fingers roughly through his hair, tugging until it hurts. “We gotta go find his sorry ass before some biter-”

“I found this.” Sulu holds up a bandanna, a ragged brown thing that Jim recognizes as the rag that’s hung around Bones’ neck since they picked him up. “By the parking lot. He’s probably trying to leave the city and head north up the interstate.”

Jim takes the bandanna, rubs the material between his fingers. “That idiot,” he mutters, and he shoves the bandanna inside his jacket. “Let’s go get our doc back.”

………………..

Leonard’s running.

There’s three- no, five now- zombs lurching after him, stumbling along at slow enough of a pace that he thinks he’ll be able to get away completely intact, given that he doesn’t run into more of the things.

He skids around a tight corner, finds himself in an alley and curses, backtracking hastily. The zombs are half a block away, but it looks like they’ve been joined by a couple more sorry-looking bastards. “Shit, shit, shit,” Leonard mutters, grabbing tight to his backpack strap and taking off down the street.

A rumble of thunder sounds above him and he spares an upward glance at the heavy gray clouds creeping over the city. The air’s thick and humid, has been since he snuck out of the aquarium this morning.

He still doesn’t know why Spock let him go, and he still remembers with perfect clarity the way the man’s dark eyes locked onto him the second he woke and gathered his things.

“I’m going,” Leonard told him quietly, his shoulders squared and braced for confrontation, but all Spock did was look at him for a long moment and nod, and he didn’t say a word as Leonard left.

It nags at him, leaving the group behind, but it’s for the best. They’re on some desperate quest for a West Coast refuge that may not even exist anymore and Leonard….

The map in his breast pocket seems to burn, right over the photograph he still carries beside his heart. It’s the one picture he managed to save from the barn, a faded image of a memory long past, the three of them sitting on the porch, Joanna perched on the railing with her long brown hair caught in the breeze and Leonard laughing beside her, Joce smiling bemusedly from behind them.

The zombs are out of sight now, and Leonard hurtles inside the open doorway of a department store, sliding to the floor against a wall and trying to catch his breath. He thumbs at his gun absently, trying to reassure himself with its presence. Four shots left, and two clips in his bag. He wishes he can get his hands on a rifle, but his was lost back at the farm and the handgun’s all he has left. Maybe if he stayed at the aquarium, Sulu would have eventually taught him to use a knife; it can’t be that far of a stretch from a scalpel-

A gurgling hiss sounds from the back of the department store, and Leonard kicks out in panic as he scrambles to his feet. He knocks over an empty rack of clothes hangers and swears, heart pounding as he catches glimpse of a zomb stumbling forward from the storage room. Her clothes were fashionable once, the tattered pink dress now hanging from her gaunt frame, long clumps of stringy blonde hair framing the oozing skull as the zomb snaps her teeth at him.

Leonard tastes bile at the back of his throat as he turns and starts running again.

………………..

Spock’s not happy with him. Jim can tell by the icy stares directed towards him, raising the hairs on the back of his neck and making him feel like a gerbil being stared down by a snake. Well, fuck the snake, Jim’s no gerbil and he’s still seething at Spock for having let Bones run off in the first place.

They’ve been heading north for the past hour or so, dodging biter mobs left and right. They’ve been running into more and more of them over time, like the freaks are also on the trail of Leonard McCoy, and Jim grits his teeth, forces his body to move faster. He’s still sore, his shoulder throbbing with every step, but he tore off the sling after the first few minutes of running. He doesn’t like the feeling of being restrained, and he needs his right hand to shoot no matter what the hell Bones told him.

But he keeps Bones’ shirt, rolled up in his backpack next to two stale ration bars and a bottle of warm water.

Sulu, being the fastest runner, keeps darting ahead and jogging back to direct them away from biters, taking circuitous routes in order to avoid a confrontation. Jim stoutly refuses to think about Bones being caught, under attack, bleeding and injured and-

“This is not what he would have wanted,” Spock comments quietly, and Jim whirls around furiously.

“And how the hell would you know? Huh? You were the one who let him go!”

“I would not have stopped you, if you desired to leave. Or Mr. Sulu. I only hope you would allow me the same courtesy.”

“It’s not a damn courtesy,” Jim hisses, feeling a vein start to throb in the side of his head. “It’s a _death sentence_ , Spock. You know-”

“I believe that you underestimate his capability to survive,” Spock says evenly, and Jim opens his mouth to tear him a new one when Sulu returns for the third time.

“We’re almost out of the city,” he reports, his face flushed light pink from exertion. “Don’t see him anywhere.”

“This is the most direct path to the interstate,” Spock says. “It is doubtful that Dr. McCoy managed as efficient a journey as the one we undertook.”

“Shit, you think he’s still back there?” Sulu asks, looking troubled. “Maybe we should-”

“We cannot return,” Spock says severely, and they both glance at Jim.

Jim’s not listening to either of them, looking down the empty street instead. There’s an odd twist in his gut, a cold dread that something is _wrong_ , and he shakes his head uncertainly. “Something’s not right,” he says, his voice low, and he pulls out his gun. “Someone’s watching-”

Something strikes him on the back of his head, and everything goes black.

………………..

He wakes in the darkness.

Jim sucks in a startled breath, finds out that he can’t, not without great difficulty, anyway, and coughs until someone yanks the sack off his head.

It takes him a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the dim lighting, and he squints around apprehensively. He’s lying on his side on a hard floor in an empty room, the once-white walls now smeared with dirt and grime and weak light straining in from behind the window blinds. A rumble of distant thunder shakes the air as he focuses on the two figures standing across the room, one a large, beefy man with a formidable scowl and the other a slighter woman with a long, severe ponytail.

“Nice day,” Jim says mildly, and notices belatedly that his hands are tied together behind his back, his ankles similarly bound.

“Why are you here?” the woman asks. It’s hard to make out her features in the shadows, not to mention the massive lump on the back of Jim’s head that still stings.

“Reckon it’s because you brought me here,” Jim says evasively, struggling to sit up and failing. _Where the hell are Spock and Sulu?_

“Smartass,” the man growls. “Ain’t nobody goes in the city anymore. Not for good reason.”

“Don’t see why now. It’s got a great view.”

“It’s a fucking dead zone, is what,” the big man snorts, and Jim sneers at him the best he can while hogtied on a dirty floor.

“Bite me, Cupcake.”

The man flushes angrily and starts towards him, but the woman lays a hand on his arm and holds him back, her dark eyes glittering when she looks at Jim.

“Why are you here?” she asks again, and Jim’s suddenly reminded of Sulu asking him the same question the night before.

“I was doing a favor for…..a friend.” He supposes he can call Bones that. If not a friend, then something a little more personal than an acquaintance. Damn, he doesn’t even know what it is about the doc that gets at him so much, like an itch he can’t scratch just beneath the surface of his skin. “We got separated from him.”

She studies him for a long moment, then nods decisively and lets go of her companion. “He’s all yours, Hendorff.”

Cupcake takes two strides towards him and Jim rolls away instinctively, managing to get his knees under him. “Hey, man-” His head snaps to the side, his cheek exploding in white pain, and he tastes blood as he falls back down again, his shoulder screaming as it hits the floor. “Fuck,” he grits out, curling in on himself, then grunts when a boot buries itself in his abdomen. “Son of a _bitch_.”

Over the ringing in his ears, he hears the door open and a quiet voice, younger than he’s expecting, saying a few inaudible sentences.

“Hendorff.” The single word is enough to stop the man from breaking another rib of two, and he pauses with a reluctant twist of his mouth.

“Aw, Ny.”

“That’s enough.”

Jim opens his watering eyes, squints balefully as the woman crosses the room and crouches in front of him. He stares at her killer boots, follows them up to her unimpressed expression.

“You’re not real smart, are you?” she asks. Jim decides to not answer that one. “Good thing one of your friends is smarter.”

_Ah, hell._

“Spock’s an interesting name. He’s not American, is he?”

 _That bastard_.

“He says you’re looking for a doctor. And that you’re headed to the West Coast.”

_Jesus, Spock, why don’t you tell them everything, huh?_

“You can talk, you know,” the woman says. “Hendorff won’t bother you. Unless there’s a need to.”

“Suppose I don’t want to,” Jim croaks. “My mom told me never to talk to strangers.” Well, she hadn’t, but that’s hardly the point. “I’m Jim. Jim Kirk. I think you dislocated my shoulder again.”

The woman looks grudgingly amused. “Uhura. Sorry about the shoulder. Cupcake’s our medic; he’ll patch you up.”

Jim tries not to think about that last sentence. “That a first name, or…..?”

“Just Uhura.”

“Does it begin with an A? Or a B? You kind of look like a B-” Cupcake growls warningly, and Jim clucks his tongue.

“I was going to say Bianca, Cupcake, don’t get your panties in a-”

Someone clears their throat, and Jim sees the kid by the door for the first time. He’s all awkward limbs and floppy hair, big doe eyes watching Jim warily. “The other one is putting up a fight, Uhura.”

Russian, Jim thinks. Interesting. It’s cute that they think he doesn’t understand them. He keeps up the pretense, though, smiling bemusedly as Uhura stands and responds in perfect Russian, “Have him and the scientist brought in. I wish to speak to them together.”

“ _Da_ ,” the kid says, and he disappears.

“Cute kid,” Jim says. “What is he, fifteen? Sixteen?”

“Chekov is seventeen,” she tells him. “And he’ll slice off an ear if he hears you calling him a kid.”

“Oh, I know. We’ve got a knife guy, too,” Jim informs her, then winces when Cupcake grabs his collar and drags him back up to his knees. Damn, his shoulder really is busted again. Maybe he should’ve listened to Bones on this one and left it in the sling…..

The door opens again and the Chekov kid enters, prodding Sulu ahead of him. Sulu’s face sags in relief at the sight of Jim, who shrugs helplessly with his one good shoulder as the man’s pushed down beside him.

Spock comes in next, looking as cool and unruffled as always, and Jim relishes the sight of the bruise on the man’s pale cheek as another woman, blonde and pretty beneath the grime, shoves him down on the other side of Jim.

Uhura stands before them, garbed in black and leaning on a rifle like their executioner. “So,” she says, her eyes lingering on Spock at the end of their little row. “Tell me about this settlement.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which it rains
> 
> (I'm so sorry for the long delay between chapters, but it should start picking up again soon!)

“Don’t you say a word,” Jim bites out, and Spock ignores him spectacularly.

“I was a researcher at a facility in Florida,” Spock says, his voice precise and methodical. “We received a message six days before Miami was overtaken that there was a sanctuary for the living on the West Californian coast, three miles north of San Francisco.”

“And you were planning to get there,” Uhura says skeptically. “Just the three of you. On foot.”

“We can find cars,” Jim says vaguely. She doesn’t even look at him, her eyes fixed on Spock.

“I don’t like you,” she says decisively, and Jim tries and fails to hide a smirk. “You’ve got a hell of a poker face, Spock.”

“That’s just what he looks like,” Sulu says helpfully, earning a warning prod to the stomach by Cupcake’s boot. “Hey-“

“Now this doctor.” Uhura spins her rifle around, planting the butt firmly on the floor again with a definitive thud. “Who is he?”

“Just some guy we picked up a couple of days ago,” Jim says dismissively. “You haven’t seen him, by chance, have you? Tall, dark, brooding. Goes by McCoy.” He glares at Spock, daring him to say more, but Spock surprisingly keeps quiet, staring down Uhura with his bull-minded tenacity.

Uhura tilts her head, her long ponytail swinging behind her, and blinks slowly. “Come a long way to fetch your doctor, haven’t you? It would have been faster to bypass Atlanta altogether.”

“Yeah, speaking of that,” Jim says. “What’s this about a dead zone, huh? You’re all still here.” He looks around at their four captors. “Why haven’t you left the city?”

“There are things here,” Chekov says hesitantly, but he shuts up fast when the blonde woman glances at him.

Jim raises an eyebrow. “Looters? You don’t look the type.”

“And you don’t look the Good Samaritan,” Uhura shoots back. “It’s too big of a risk to be wandering around here as a favor to ‘just some guy’. Who’s this McCoy to you, really?”

Jim opens his mouth, hesitates, then closes it again. She’s right, he realizes, and the fact that he only realizes this now unsettles him.

“What are you going to do with us?” Sulu asks, his voice low, and Jim stares at the floor as Uhura’s gaze flicks away from him.

“Haven’t decided,” she says, and gestures to her companions. “For now, let’s give you the grand tour. Not him,” she adds, glancing at Spock.

“Watch it, sweethea-” Jim admonishes when the blonde woman yanks at his arm, barely managing to keep from yelling when his shoulder slides and groans and wrenches back into place. “Jesus _Christ_ , woman!” he yelps, doubling over in pain.

“Men,” she mutters in a distinctly British accent, wrinkling her nose as she prods him to his feet, bending to slice the ties around his ankles. “Such infants.”

“You know something, there’s this one doctor I know you’d _really_ get along with,” Jim informs her, craning his neck to make sure the Chekov kid’s got Sulu behind him. His shoulder tells him in no uncertain terms that he’s both a moron and an asshole, and he agrees wholeheartedly.

“I’m Jim,” he says with false cheer, as the woman kicks the door open and propels him through. She ignores him.

“Carol,” Chekov says helpfully, and Jim grins at him when he quails under his companion’s exasperated glare.

“Pretty name.”

“Please shut up,” she tells him, and the door closes behind them.

They’re in a hallway lined with boarded up windows along one side, but Jim can just make out enough between the cracks to see that they’re on the third or fourth floor of the building, the windows facing out towards a parking lot. There are more doors on the other side of the hallway, some of them open, and Jim glances in one of them as they pass.

“A hospital?” he asks, surprised at the rows of stripped down bed frames and privacy curtains. “I thought they were all quarantined after the outbreak.”

“This one was evacuated prior to the outbreak,” Carol tells him. “It was scheduled to be demolished in the spring, but, well…”

“At least there’s empty beds,” Sulu murmurs, and Jim wonders when was the last time he slept on a mattress.

“How many of you are there?” Jim asks. “Must be a large group, to keep an entire building secured like this.”

Carol ignores the question, and they march on in silence.

“Thought this was going to be a tour,” Jim says, when he tires of the nonresponse. He gives his arm an experimental tug and Carol only tightens her grip.

“You won’t need one,” she says. “Seeing as you won’t be wandering around without a guard.”

“What, you don’t trust us?” Jim asks lightly, earning himself an impatient eyeroll from his captor.

“Trust is suicide now, haven’t you heard?”

“You trust your leader,” Jim points out. _Keep her talking,_ he thinks. _Keep looking for a way out._ “Why?”

“That’s none of your business.”

Jim gives up and lets Carol haul him about, trying to ignore the shooting pain radiating from his shoulder with every step. He wonders if Bones is even still alive.  

They end up in one of the empty rooms at the end of the corridor, next to a guard sitting in a rickety wooden chair with a crowbar propped against his shoulder. Carol nods at him before shoving Jim into the room, Sulu stumbling in seconds later, and the door is locked behind them with a warning, “Stay put or you won’t like it.”

The room is small, square, and white, two mattresses pushed up beneath the window and a forbidding steel cabinet in the corner with a faded human anatomy poster over the doors.

“Fucking depressing,” Jim mutters, testing the bonds around his wrists gloomily, and Sulu grunts behind him in agreement. “So, what the hell now?”

………………..

Leonard remembers Janice’s words about smelling a coming storm just as the first drops of rain drip on his head, and he groans under his breath when the clouds above him proceed to rupture with a vengeance. The rain’s hard and cold, soaking him in seconds, and he fumbles to pull the hood of his jacket up over his head, blinking water from his eyes as he tries to take stock of his surroundings.

He’s finally made it out of the city, though not through his intended path. The zombs were everywhere once he got close to the northern exits, and he was forced to swerve to the northwest and clamber over a section of collapsed highway. He’s in the open now, but still miles away from where he needs to be, and now he’s being rained on like a damn fool.

Better to stay close to the city, he decides. There’s less risk in being caught by a horde; it’s harder for the zombs to gather in full force when they have to cram into the narrow streets, and there are more places to hide when nightfall comes.

Right now, he’d settle for a solid roof over his head. The rain isn’t doing any wonders for him, and the last thing he needs now is to get pneumonia. Maybe he should’ve left some of his kit back with the others, in case one of them got an infection or stayed too long in the rain or—

Leonard shuffles the weight of his pack and resolutely doesn’t wonder if Jim and the others are still in the aquarium, or if they’ve left already. He doesn’t even consider the possibility of them coming after him - they already have a quest and he has his own Holy Grail to pursue. No need for them to drag each other down. Somehow, though, he doesn’t think Jim will see it that way.

He pulls out the map and runs his finger along the red line leading out of the city, looking to the north at the dark line of the interstate far in the distance. _Wait for me, Jo_ , he thinks, shoving the map back in his pocket and starting forward.

 _I’m coming_.

………………..

Between the two of them, it doesn’t take long to untie themselves, and soon Jim is circling the room impatiently, rubbing at the chafe marks around his wrists. “The hell was Spock thinking?” he mutters. “We don’t even _know_ these people, and here he is, bringing out the fruit baskets and cookies and welcome sign—”

“He wants to take them to the sanctuary,” Sulu supplies helpfully from his seat by the boarded windows.

“The sanctuary?” Jim repeats, incredulous. “He can’t. _We_ can’t.”

Sulu shrugs, ever the level-headed one, and he leans back against the wall, watching Jim pace the floor. “This is a large group. Has to be, like you said, to hold this place. Safety in numbers and all that, you know?”

“So you're on his side.”

“I didn’t say that.” Sulu pauses, then purses his lips thoughtfully. “It’s not a bad point, though.”

Jim grits his teeth and keeps pacing, kicking a cloud of dust up with each step. “We’ve been doing fine on our own.”

“We’d do even better with more eyes. More weapons.”

It’s a solid point, and Jim scowls at the wall. “How are you so goddamn _reasonable_?”

"It's a talent. Besides, it's not like we've got much choice, either way." Sulu raises an arm, jabs a thumb out the window above his head. "How far's that drop look to you?"

Jim crosses over, presses his face up against the rough boards and squints between the cracks. "Dunno, forty feet? Looks like a back parking lot up against the woods."

"Better up here than down there," Sulu says pragmatically. "Don't you think?"

Jim sighs and pulls back, thunking his forehead against the planks. "Sure," he says, but all he can think of is that ass backwards doctor out there on his own. “Sure.”

………………..

An hour later, Jim’s starting to eye the bedsheet with desperate intent.

“Really?” Sulu says, unimpressed. “You’re gonna escape like a princess?”

“Hey, don’t knock the classics.” Jim tugs experimentally at the corner of the sheet. “Gimme a hand?”

“With what?”

“C’mon, man, don’t tell me you still don’t got a knife on you.”

“I’m not an escape artist.”

“No, but you’re, like. A knife guy. Don’t you have anything, I dunno, stuck up your—”

Something clanks loudly in the hallway outside and they both flinch.

Jim scrambles to his feet as soon as the door cracks open, only to sit back down immediately when Uhura points her rifle lazily at him from the doorway.

“That a’boy,” she says, and gestures. Spock stumbles in and manages to make it look graceful, prodded by Cupcake from behind. “You, come here.”

“Me?” Sulu asks, the picture of innocence, and Jim steps towards him instinctively.

“Watch it, Kirk,” Uhura says, waving him back, and he can only watch as Cupcake shoves Spock down by the window and grabs Sulu instead, hauling him up, and the door slams shut behind them again with a loud click.

“You told them our names,” Jim says, not sure if he’s feeling more disappointed or betrayed or just fucking _pissed._

“I told them yours,” Spock corrects primly, looking up at him from the floor. “Mr. Sulu introduced himself to Pavel voluntarily.”

“Who the fuck is—”

“You are angry,” Spock says. “Understandably so, but it will do no good to lose your head—”

Jim hits him. The angle is bad and he ends up just clipping Spock's cheek, but it makes a satisfying sound and something lurches darkly in his stomach when Spock grunts in surprise.

"You bastard," Jim says, and the anger simmering in his gut is familiar and good. It's something to feed off of, to channel his frustration into, and he clenches his fist. "What the hell were you _thinking?"_

Spock touches his fingertips to the blooming bruise on his cheekbone and looks reproachful. "I believe I was thinking of the greater good."

"They took Sulu—"

"For a mere interview," Spock says dismissively, and he stands, keeping a careful distance from Jim. "Yours will come in turn, unless you would prefer to escape as planned."

Jim opens his mouth, a retort ready at his lips, then blinks. "What?"

Spock tosses him something, and Jim catches it instinctively. He looks down at the folded straight razor that Spock uses with religious fervor every morning, then back up at the man himself. He thinks he can forgive the ever so smug tilt of Spock's eyebrows just this once.

"Spock, I could kiss you."

Spock looks pained. "I assure you that the feeling is not reciprocated."

Jim slaps him on the back anyway and grins. “Let's get to work.”

………………..

Spock's one strong son of a bitch when he's willing to get his hands dirty, and he seems compliant enough when he holds the planks over the window while Jim pries at the nails with the razor.

"Do try to show some care," Spock says, already looking like he regrets the decision when the razor slips and Jim swears loudly. "It was a gift from my father."

"Sorry," Jim says, readjusting his grip and sending another bent nail clattering to the floor. “Why d’you do it?”

“I do not understand.”

Jim stops and leans his shoulder against the plank, wiping sweat from his forehead and looking at Spock. “You sold us out.”

“I bought time,” Spock corrects. “I did not believe that we would be harmed, but neither did I believe that we would eventually be released. The safest course of action was to comply with our captors’ wishes. Keep going.”

Jim scowls, but starts picking at the nails again. “You couldn’t have just made up shit?”

“I am not a good liar.”

“Like hell you’re—”

Spock suddenly pulls hard, and the last plank rips free from the window. They stop and listen, but there’s no movement from the other side of the door, and Spock sets the plank down neatly beside the others.

“I was unable to procure any supplies,” he says. “Nyota kept me under careful watch.”

“Nyota?” Jim asks absently, fumbling with the window latch. Spock doesn’t answer, and Jim glances up at him. Spock looks back stoically, his eyebrows dipping ever so slightly, and Jim squints.

“Nyota?” he  says again, and Spock blinks twice. Jim nearly drops the window. “Oh my _God_ , Spock, you didn’t—”

“This is no time to hold a discussion,” Spock says primly. “They will be returning for you shortly.”

“You’re a slut,” Jim tells him delightedly, swinging a leg over the windowsill. There’s a narrow ledge running along the outside wall, and he balances his foot on it gingerly. “I fucking knew it. Under that bowl cut, you—”

“That is enough,” Spock interrupts. “You should be on your way.” He places his hands on the window frame, blocking the view of the door with his own body. “I doubt you will be followed, but I will delay any attempts to do so.”

"But you're coming with me, aren't you?" Jim demands, a surge of panic suddenly coiling in his gut. "You and Sulu."

"I'm afraid not," Spock says, and Jim's stomach plunges down to the cracked parking lot below.

"Liar," Jim says. "You're not afraid of anything."

Spock looks at him solemnly. "Our odds of survival increase exponentially with a larger group. If all goes well, we will reach the settlement safely by the year’s end.”

Jim already feels like taking another swing at him and has to clench his fingers on the windowsill to keep from doing it. “Then what the hell are we doing right now? Why—”

Spock gives a small sigh, like Jim is a particularly thick-headed child. “You will find Dr. McCoy as planned,” he says. “And we will reconvene in Chattanooga.”

“ _Tennessee_? But—”

There’s a shuffle from behind the door, and Jim’s hand tightens on the window frame. “Spock, I—”

“Find the doctor,” Spock says, and starts to turn away.

“Spock, _wait_.” Jim grabs at him— _fuck, fuck, don’t leave—_ and has to take a steadying breath. “The razor.”

“You should keep it.”

"It was from your dad," Jim tries, and Spock looks down at him with his token exasperation.

"You will return it to me later," he answers, with as much certainty as if he was proclaiming the color of the gunsteel sky. "In Tennessee."

"Aw, hell, Spock—"

"Goodbye, Jim."

It's the first time that Spock's said his name, and Jim doesn't think that it escapes either of them. His stomach clenches and he forces himself to nod, shoving the folded razor in his pocket. "Bye, then."

There's a note of false cheer in the words, but Spock doesn't say anything more, and Jim swallows before crossing over the rest of the way, clinging close to the brick wall as he slides off the windowsill. It’s starting to rain, cold and stinging on his head and shoulders, and he shivers, his shoulder aching when he reaches out to grasp the next window frame over.

Beside him, the window creaks shut. “Fuck it,” Jim mutters, tucking his right arm awkwardly against his side and shuffling on. “Fuck _you_.” He’ll find Bones _and_ beat them to Chattanooga, that’ll show Spock. Spock and his noble plans, like he’s doing Jim a _favor_ , like he actually believes Jim’s gonna make it out there alone with some country doctor on a suicide mission.

And that’s even if he manages to find Bones at all.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which someone is found

The interstate is completely clogged with cars by the time Leonard reaches it, the vehicles packed end to end like rusty sardines, doors open and windows smashed and dried blood staining the asphalt. In the far distance, he can make out a few swaying undead amongst the carcasses of a world far gone.

It’s a steel rat’s maze with far too many twists and turns for his liking, and so Leonard takes one look before opting for the woods instead. The rain’s faded to a light drizzle, just enough to catch annoyingly in his eyelashes, and he startles every time a heavy drop falls from the leaves and smacks his head. He turns up his collar and bends his head low, and watches his boots as he crunches through the undergrowth.  

He’s been walking for what feels like hours, though he knows that time is more fluid than ever in this new world. Just barely in the distance, he can glimpse the interstate; it’s the only fix he has on his current location, and he looks up every few seconds to make sure that he’s staying his course.

His foot catches on an overzealous root, and he trips for the umpteenth time, barely managing to catch himself before he faceplants the slick leaves. “Shit,” he mutters, dragging his arm over his face and wiping at the water constantly dripping into his eyes.

When he next looks up, he sees a dark smear between the trees that’s too large to be a biter, too still to be a shadow. _Biter_ , he thinks absently. It’s Jim’s word for the zombs, he remembers. His and Spock’s and Sulu’s. Christ, he hopes they got out of the city all right. Might be even coasting their way to California already, for all he knows.

Leonard tugs his handgun from his waistband, keeping it shielded from the rain as he approaches the shape, squinting against the slanting mist. It’s a lean-to, he realizes, the windowless walls dark and forbidding in the faded light, rain dripping from the eaves of the slanted roof.

He kicks the door open and hops back hastily, waiting. When no rotting undead instantly lurches out, he edges forward again warily, gun first.

The lean-to is dark and dank, the floorboards creaking under his feet as he inches in slowly, but one glance tells him that it’s empty, has probably been empty since this all started.

There’s a storage locker in the corner, where he finds a couple of crumpled, weirdly stained blankets and a flashlight that sputters to life after he slaps it against his palm a couple of times. He kneels down beside the locker, sets his gun down on the floor within easy reach, and sets about trying to make the shack a little more fit for living.

Dinner’s a dented can of warm peaches. They’re the sticky sweet kind that he used to like, but now he feels faintly sick just at the sight of them swimming in artificially flavored syrup. It’s a damn shame, is what it is, losing his taste for something that used to make his day, and he stabs his spoon into the can sullenly.

He’s just scraping the last of the soggy fruit off the bottom of the can when he hears the noise outside and stops instantly. Slow dragging footsteps, heavy and uneven, and Leonard’s reaching for his gun before he even places the sound. It’s a biter, he’s certain, and while he’s sure he’s safe inside, the last thing he wants is for the thing to go and attract more of its friends.

He pulls back the deadbolt on the inside of the door and eases it open with a foot, listening. He can hear a few desperate crickets, distant rustling of the trees as the rain clouds drift away. The footsteps resume again, slithering through wet leave, and Leonard shoves the door open the rest of the way, aiming his gun at the bloody figure limping out from behind the nearest tree. “All right, you son of a—”

“Hey, Bones,” says the figure, with a pathetic attempt at a wave. “There you are.”

Leonard nearly pulls the trigger anyway. His stomach lurches and he gawks disbelievingly, his mind still scrambling to catch up. “ _Jim_?” he demands hoarsely, lowering his gun. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I think…” Jim sways on his feet, and Leonard finally registers the strange angle of his right arm, the paleness of Jim’s face beneath the dirt. “I think I’m gonna be sick, doc.”

Leonard bites back a curse and shoves his gun in his waistband, scrambling over the rocks. “Shit,” he grunts, catching Jim just as the man’s legs give out. “ _Fuck_ ,” he says with feeling, when he feels the heat of Jim’s skin. “Fucking _idiot_ —”

“Don’t be mean,” Jim mumbles, and passes out on the spot. Leonard swears out loud this time, his feet slipping on the soft mud under Jim’s dead weight.

“Heavy son of a bitch,” he complains, and sits down hard, Jim sprawled in an ungainly tangle over his lap. It’s starting to rain again, and by the looks of it, Jim’s fully out and will be for a while. Leonard sighs and casts a wary eye at the darkening shadows, each distant rustle suddenly a potential threat now that he’s saddled with a dead weight. _“There you are,”_ the kid said, like Leonard’s just wandered away from a block party and didn’t up and abandon them in an empty aquarium.  

He looks down at Jim, guilt pinching at his stomach. Why Jim’s wandering in the woods on his own in this state, he’s got no clue, but he thinks that he at least owes it to the kid to make sure they both get through the night in one piece.

………………..

He feels the itching first, an insistent prickling along his cheek that only intensifies the longer he acknowledges it, and by the time Jim cracks an eye open, it’s graduated to a full-blown throbbing. Milky light swims into focus above him, and he squints for a few seconds before realizing that it’s sunlight, pale and wavering on the wooden… rafters?

After a while, he thinks that he’s in some sort of shack, the sunlight streaming in from a hole in the wall near the highest point of the roof. He hears a creak and immediately tries to roll over, shoving a hand under his pillow for the gun he always—

His fingers slide across markedly gun-less cloth, and he instantly regrets moving when his head spins, his empty stomach clenching uneasily. Fuck, if it’s a biter, it can fucking have him.

“Morning.” A shadow falls across him, blocking the sunlight that spills in from the open door, and something touches his cheek, warm and dry. “You ain’t lookin’ so hot, kid.”

Jim blinks up at the man beside him, at his furrowed eyebrows, hazel eyes, the way the corner of his mouth pulls down in a permanent scowl, and hazy memories begin to pull together. He remembers rain, a burning ache in his right side, his arm, and in the distance, a blurry shadow that he somehow recognized despite the blood in his eyes. “ _Bones_.”

“Short-term memory’s okay, at least,” Bones mutters, pressing his palm to Jim’s forehead and pushing him back onto the blanket. “Stay put, I’ll be right back.” He starts to stand and Jim swallows hard, his stomach still rolling.

“I’m…”

Bones pauses and looks at him, then grimaces and nudges something on the floor with his foot. “There’s a bucket.” He manages to make it to the door before Jim makes a desperate grab for the bucket and retches into it, but it’s a near thing.

The door’s shut and Bones is gone by the time he’s able to look up again, coughing and grimacing at the lingering taste of acid in his mouth. He can see Bones’ shadow from under the door, standing just outside, and briefly considers calling him back in. But by the time he manages to clear his throat, Bones is already walking away and Jim doesn’t quite know if he’s more relieved or disappointed.

He settles back against the blanket on the floor, rubbing the rough fabric between his fingers and trying to take inventory of his various pains and aches. His arm is busted to _hell_ , and he blinks in weary amusement when he realizes Bones must have slinged it up properly this time. His head feels heavy, and when he reaches up with his left hand, he feels bandages around his forehead. Shit, he barely even remembers hitting his head, only his foot slipping at the last second and taking a hard landing in the hospital parking lot, a nauseating crunch in his right arm that tells him that he’s finally pushed it beyond its limits.

It’s all a dizzy blur after that, a bloodstained haze of ducking in doorways and holding his breath as biters stagger past, Spock’s razor clutched tight in his hand. It was the first time he’s been alone since this all started, and he felt strangely naked in the streets, blood dripping down his cheek and staining his shirt, arm throbbing and burning with each stumbling step. He remembers finally reaching the highway, remembers taking one look at the clogged roads and thinking, _Bones isn’t stupid enough to take_ that _on by himself_ , and tripping into the woods instead.

And then—

The door creaks open again, and Jim tilts his head to the side, watching Bones cross over to him. He’s holding a bottle of water in one hand, a rag that looks halfway clean in the other, and he kneels down beside Jim with a soft groan.

“That was a damn fool thing you did,” he says, his face unreadable. He reaches out and touches Jim’s jaw, fingertips unexpectedly light as he turns Jim’s face towards him and studies it critically. “I could’ve shot you, y’know. Probably would’ve. Comin’ out of the dark like that covered in blood and God knows what else—.”

“Wasn’t all mine,” Jim mumbles. “Ouch,” he adds, when Bones’ thumb presses against a bruise on his chin.

Bones makes a dismissive noise and releases him, uncapping the bottle and shaking water out onto the rag. “Broken arm, probable concussion, two hairline rib fractures, more contusions and lacerations than I can count on my fingers and toes, and that’s just what I can work out with no x-rays.”

“Am I gonna make it, doc?” Jim jokes, and wishes he hasn’t when Bones slaps the wet rag over his face without ceremony.

“Unfortunately, your suicidal ass will live to see another day,” Bones says, peeling the rag away and wiping at the dried blood Jim can still feel on his skin. “Do me a favor and make sure it stays that way, will you?”

Jim opens his mouth and closes it when Bones runs the cloth over his face to his other cheek, then tries again. “You haven’t asked.”

“About what?”

“I expected a “what the hell”, at the very least.”

Bones pauses, his head tilting in consideration. His hair’s too long, tangled and falling into his eyes, and Jim blinks up at him, his mind blanking for a split second. “Figured you’d tell me eventually,” Bones says at last. “Can’t be a good reason for you t’be out on your own like this.’

Jim coughs and wishes he didn’t; his ribs scream in protest, and his chest goes tight, and Bones hands him the rest of the water wordlessly. It’s warm and leaves behind the taste of dirt, but Jim swallows it down greedily, some of it spilling over his chin and down the side of his neck. Bones pulls the bottle away before he can drown himself, and waits.

Jim clears his throat, barely managing not to choke himself again doing it, and tells him the whole sorry story while he still has his breath.

………………..

Leonard didn’t think it was possible to think Jim a bigger idiot until now. He stares down at Jim’s pathetic face, all bruised and cut from running into a _tree_ , if he heard correctly. A damn tree, of all things. Kid was lucky it wasn’t a goddamn _biter._

“What the _hell_ , Jim?” he finally says, and Jim looks at him wryly.

“Ah, there it is.”

“You should’ve stayed!” He sees Jim flinch and lowers his voice, guilt stirring when he realizes he remembers the more than probable concussion. “I hate to say it after all this, but maybe Spock had the right idea, stayin’ with that group.”

“I had to find you,” Jim protests, his voice feeble. He’s not meeting Leonard’s eye, plucking helplessly at his makeshift sling. “It’s dangerous.”

It takes all Leonard has left to keep from rolling his eyes so hard that they risk getting stuck. “Dunno about you, kid, but I think I’ve got a pretty good handle on things on my own.”

Jim’s jaw tightens, but he doesn’t reply, and after a long moment, Leonard sighs and sits back on his heels. Figures that the kid would choose _now_ to get all quiet. If Leonard didn’t know better, he’d think Jim’s sulking. “You need to take a piss?”

Jim’s head jerks ever so slightly to the side and Leonard purses his lips, frowning down at him speculatively. “Get some rest,” he says at last. “The sooner you’re on your feet, the sooner we can head out.”

“We?” Jim’s voice cracks, and Leonard sets the water bottle down by his head pointedly before standing.

“Well, I sure as hell can’t send you back to… who was it, Uhura? By the sound of it, Spock will kick you back out himself.”

“Mmm. Hey....Bones.”

Leonard’s halfway to the door already, and he stops and looks back. Jim blinks up at him, pale and anxious and his eyes absurdly blue. Suddenly, he seems very young. “Don’t go too far,” Jim says. It’s more of a question than anything else, but Leonard’s abruptly reminded of Jo, the way she’d look at him all wide-eyed and flushed when she was sick in bed, hovering on the verge of asking him to stay with her all night.

“Worried about biters?” Leonard glances out the open door at the trees. “Think the area’s clear for now, but you’ll be fine in here.”

Jim opens his mouth, then hesitates, and for a split second, Leonard has the stupid thought that Jim’s about to say he was worried about _him_ . “All right,” Jim finally says, and Leonard blinks, shaking himself out of it. _Stupid_.

He turns back and pretends that he can’t feel Jim’s eyes on him as he leaves, closing the door firmly behind him. It’s a devastatingly beautiful day, yesterday’s storm clouds blown away by pale blue sky, and the air smells of damp earth and leaves. Leonard sits down on the front step of the lean-to, looks out at the gold-flecked woods, and digs another can of peaches out from his pocket.

Jim’s dozing when Leonard enters again half an hour later, blinking the sunlight from his eyes as he steps into the cool shade. The kid’s clutching his blanket to his chest, dirty fingers rubbing at the rough fabric uneasily, his face pinched in a frown. Leonard squats down beside him, setting his half-eaten peaches to the side, and looks at him.

There’s a fleck of dried blood beneath his jaw that Leonard missed earlier, and he reaches for it without thinking. Jim’s pulse jumps against his thumb, fast and light like a rabbit’s, and before Leonard can pull away, Jim’s eyes are open.

It only takes a split second, and Jim’s hand is wrapped tight around Leonard’s wrist, squeezing hard enough to hurt.

“Fuck,” Leonard blurts, startled. He loses his balance and sits down hard, yanking his hand away. “Jesus _Christ_.”

“Bones?” Jim blinks twice, his eyes focusing, and he twists to one side as if trying to sit up, then thinks better of it and stops. “What...how long…”

“Couple of hours.” Leonard rubs unconsciously at his wrist, watching Jim warily. “How’re you feeling?”

Jim shrugs, cocking his head looking down at the can. “Hurts. What’s that?”

“For you.” He watches Jim pick up the can and sniff the contents dubiously before taking the spoon and digging in. “How’s your head?”

“It’s fine.”

“Jim.”

Jim shrugs again, one cheek stuffed full of canned fruit. “What d’you want me to say?”  

“You’ve got a concussion,” Leonard says, exasperated. “What do you think?”

“Dunno.” Jim grins at him, fast and hard. “You’re the doc.” And he goes back to devouring the peaches.

Leonard stares at him, and thinks that he’ll never quite understand the inner workings of Jim Kirk.

Time passes in languid stretches; he sits against the wall opposite from Jim, one knee pulled up to his chest, and dozes in short bursts. Sometimes Jim’s asleep when he wakes, and he reaches out with a leg and nudges the kid until he blinks his eyes open peevishly again. “How’s your head,” he always asks, and Jim always responds with the same grunt and half shrug.

Once, he opens his eyes and Jim’s watching him. Leonard stares back, not quite awake yet, and Jim’s mouth curls in a not-quite smile.

“You look different when you sleep,” is all he says, his eyes blue and utterly unreadable.

Leonard doesn’t know how to respond. “How’re you feeling?” he finally asks.

Jim blinks and the air between them seems to lighten, some inexplicable tension dissipating with that single movement. “I need to piss.”

Leonard tries to be careful when he helps Jim up, but there’s not a single place to put his hands that isn’t cut up or bruised. Jim grins and laughs like a fool the whole way, but if there’s anything that Leonard’s learned about him at all, it’s that the more the kid laughs, the more it hurts. In the end, he wraps an arm around Jim’s waist and helps him hobble to the door, stepping down onto the ground first before taking Jim’s weight and swinging him down. Jim’s body is warm and solid, pressing against him for a brief second before Leonard steadies him and lets go again. He watches Jim limp to the treeline, then flicks his eyes away when Jim unceremoniously shoves his jeans down past his hips, and he tries not to listen as he keeps an eye out for wandering biters.

Finally, Jim stumbles back, his face pale from exertion, and Leonard boosts him back up into the shack, pressing a hand to his lower back and trying not to think too much of it when Jim grabs at his arm for balance.

“Watch your step,” he says gruffly, and he casts one final glance over his shoulder before closing the door behind him.

………………..

“Chattanooga, huh?” Bones asks him that night, and Jim looks over at him. He’s playing with the flashlight, holding it between his knees as he makes clumsy shadow puppets against the circle of light on the wall. Jim squints at the current shape and thinks that it looks vaguely like a dog.

“Yeah.” Jim watches the dog turn into a bunny. “You ever been?”

“Once.” Bones’ voice is distant, his eyes fixed on the blobby bunny shadow. “Took a road trip for our honeymoon… made a detour on our way to Chicago. There’s a bridge there, you know? It’s on one of those lists you always used to see online— places you gotta visit before you die and all that. Shit like that.” He drops his hands and tips his head towards Jim. “You?”

“Nah.” Jim drums his fingers on his thigh and distantly wishes for a smoke. He hasn’t touched the things since college, but what the hell, it’s the end of the world. “So how was it?”

“What?”

“The bridge.” Jim pulls his knees up to his chin, like he’s waiting for a bedtime story. The shape of Bones’ frown is etched in shadow, his expression unreadable. “This life-affirming bridge.”

Bones snorts. “It was just a bridge.” He switches off the flashlight.

Jim stares at him, feeling mildly cheated. “That’s it? That’s your inspirational story? It was just a bridge?”

“I never said it’d be inspirational.” Bones scowls down at his hands, but it seems more out of habit than anything else.

“I bet Spock has a better bedside manner.”

Bones makes an offended noise, then pushes himself to his feet. For a wild moment, Jim thinks he’s going to come closer, but all he does is stretch and crack his neck. “Get some sleep, kid. We’ll see how you feel in the morning.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been...so long....

Jim feels great in the morning— or so he tells Leonard, anyway, bouncing on his heels with his broken arm still tied awkwardly to his chest. “Never felt better, Bones. I swear.” 

“You’re a goddamn liar,” Leonard informs him. He rubs a hand over his face, scratches at his beard, and wishes desperately for caffeine. He watches Jim struggle to open a can of peaches, sitting on the floor and holding it between his feet while he pries at the tab with his left hand. It looks a bit like a discombobulated squirrel trying to crack a particularly difficult nut, and Leonard eventually takes pity when it gets too sad to watch.

Jim beams when Leonard hands back the open can, tipping his head back and slurping down half the peaches in one go. His throat bobs when he swallows, surprisingly pale under the dirt, and Leonard blinks. 

“You’re going to make yourself sick.”

“Grnhfb ghdj,” Jim says cheerfully, syrup glistening at the corner of his mouth. Leonard makes a horrified sound and looks away, tries to rub a crick from his neck.

After breakfast, Leonard checks him over, makes sure Jim’s splint is tight against his forearm, that his fingers haven’t turned purple from the bandages. His head wound looks better, but Leonard leaves the bandages. “You look like shit,” he finally says, after pushing his hands under Jim’s shirt to pat down his ribs. Jim holds carefully still while he does it, barely breathing like it’ll make it go faster. “But you’re okay.”

“Told you.” Jim grins at him, fast and bright. “Never felt better.”

………………..

“What’re their names?” Jim asks him without warning, and Leonard looks up, confused.

“What?” They’ve been walking in silence since they broke camp, taking turns as the lead. Jim’s in front now, poking absently at the leaves with a crooked walking stick he’s fashioned from a fallen branch, Leonard following a few steps behind and staring at the kid’s feet without really seeing them.

_ “You gonna make me come with you?” He looks at Jim from across the shack, trying to look steely but thinking he probably just looks a touch desperate. _

_ “Don’t be stupid,” Jim says airily. “We’re going to find your family first.” _

_ “You don’t have to do that.” He doesn’t want Jim’s sympathy. Doesn’t want the both of them to go out in a blaze of stupid glory. _

_ “Of course I do.” Jim quirks his mouth, a not-quite smile. “They’re all you’ve got left, right?”  _

“Your wife and kid.” Jim glances back at him, a quick peek over his shoulder before swiveling his eyes back to the front. “Think I get to know at least that much by now.”

Leonard stares at Jim’s back, at the faint flush of sunburn over the collar of his shirt, and suddenly wonders if Jim’s got a family of his own somewhere. “Joanna,” he says, the name dusty and painful. “My daughter.”

“Joanna,” Jim repeats, rolling the name over experimentally in his mouth. “Pretty name. And your wife?”

“Ex,” Leonard says automatically, and he doesn’t know why he still bothers to make the correction. “Jocelyn. If she’s with Jo, they’re both fine.” He says it with shallow conviction, but it’s something that he  _ needs  _ to believe. Joce is tougher than he is, has always been, and she’d fight to her last breath to keep their daughter safe. 

Hopefully, it didn’t come to that.

“Hey,” Jim says, and he stops walking, Leonard almost crashing into him from behind. “They’re okay. You know that, right?” He meets Leonard’s eyes, piercing blue staring out from his dirty face with a surprising earnestness. The kid’s got eyes brighter than the sky after a thunderstorm.

"Yeah," Leonard answers after a moment, and his voice is rough. He clears his throat and doesn’t know where to look. "Yeah, of course."

“Good.” Jim adjusts his pack, shuffling his arm uncomfortably in its sling. “Because this is just a fucking waste of time otherwise.”

Leonard eyes him for a moment. “You really believe we’re gonna make it?”

“It’s all I  _ can _ do, isn’t it?”

“Well, no.” Leonard’s foot strikes a rock and sends it bouncing away out of sight. “Truth is, kid, you don’t know me from jackshit. Why are you even here instead of with your friends?”

There’s a long pause before Jim sniffs and scratches at the bandages under his shirt. “Couldn’t leave your sorry ass out here alone, could I?”

It’s not really an answer. Not one that Leonard’s satisfied with, in any case, but he can hardly turn the kid around and tell him to go back, not now. He’s not stupid enough to think that either of them stands a better chance on their own. 

A few miles later, they discover, of all things, a tiny surplus store by a lonely stretch of highway with nothing else in sight. 

“If life was a movie, it would be some sort of horrible trap,” Leonard decides, squinting warily at the dirty building. “I mean, what the hell?”

“It’s the South,” Jim says confidently, with the air of one who’s heard a lot of things about the South and hasn’t been disappointed yet. “Places like this are all over the place.” 

“They really aren’t,” Leonard says, but to be fair, he’s seen some weirder things over the years. They make their way to the glass door, which is thick with dust and grime, but intact, and Leonard rubs a clean patch with his wrist to look inside.

“Looks clear,” Jim announces, before Leonard can say a word, and he promptly smashes a rock through the door.

“Holy—” Leonard jumps back at the resulting crash, his heart pounding. Glass glitters over the ground in front of him, some of it on the tops of his boots. He waits for a screaming alarm that’ll bring every biter in the woods down on them, but he hears nothing except bird calls and Jim crunching forward beside him. “You’ve got a damn screw loose, you know that?!”

“It was clear,” Jim says, the very picture of innocence. He puts his good arm through the hole he’s made, the tip of his tongue caught between his teeth as he fumbles for the inside lock and flips it. “Besides, you’ve got my back.”

Leonard glowers at him, exasperated, but follows him in anyway when he pushes the door open, sweeping broken glass aside.

The store is dark and smells, of all things, like Christmas candles. There’s a dark silhouette slumped over the counter that has Leonard grabbing for his gun, heart thumping, but then his eyes focus on the revolver clutched in the body’s hand, the terrible stillness of the figure that speaks of a final death.

“Nice gun,” is all Jim says, tugging the revolver away from the corpse. Leonard watches him do it, his stomach clenching for reasons he himself doesn’t even know how to explain. 

“What are you gonna do with a peashooter like that?”

Jim waves the gun at him, the barrel gleaming in the sparse light, then sticks it in the waistband of his jeans. “Always have a back-up, Bones. You never know.”

Leonard opens his mouth to tell him he’s going to blow his balls off like that, but then the sight of the rifle rack distracts him. “Oh, thank God,” he says, moving past the biter. “Come to Papa.”

Jim snorts behind him. “Never say that again.” 

“You wouldn’t understand.” Leonard crosses over and runs his hands over the guns. Most are missing, but of the three that remain, he immediately picks out the one that reminds him most of his own back at the farmhouse. “Christ, these are beauties. It’s a miracle they aren’t gone already.”

“Chances are everyone cleared outta town before it came to a mass breakout.” Jim’s voice is muffled, already buried in an open display case along the wall.

Leonard grunts in acknowledgment, setting the rifle down carefully on the counter and pulling open a few drawers, sifting through in search of ammo. He finds a couple of cases and pockets them after cracking open the cardboard lids to check the contents. 

“Hey, Bones, what d’you think?” 

Leonard looks up at the sound of Jim’s voice and squints across the dim shop. “The hell is that?”

“It’s badass, is what it is.” Jim unsheathes the machete in his hand and slashes it through the air gleefully. “This is  _ great _ .”

“It’s impractical,” Leonard grumbles, going back to digging through the drawers. “God knows why they even have that here.”

Jim laughs, a soft burst of undiluted delight, and it gives Leonard a moment’s pause. It’s something else, he thinks distractedly, hearing a laugh like that in a place and time like this. He shoves one last box of ammo in his pack and zips it up, swinging it over his shoulder and reaching for his new rifle. “Hurry your ass up.”

“In a sec. Grab us some gear from the back, will you? I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of sleeping on sticks and stones.”

Leonard sighs, but Jim’s got a point, and so he pulls out his flashlight and heads to the camping kits.

It’s another half hour before they leave the store, only because Leonard has to argue Jim out of taking a hammock— 

_ “I’ve always wanted one of these, Bones, let me live a little.” _

_ “What are you going to do,  _ swing _ at the biters?” _

—but he feels oddly lighter by the time they do. 

………………..

They take a break at a bridge overlooking the freeway. There’s a decent breeze at this height, and Jim sits with his legs hanging through the guardrail, a water bottle tucked between his splinted arm and side. The metal against his chest is warm, and he finds himself leaning into it with a sigh, laying his cheek against the sun-heated steel. Something in his pocket starts poking uncomfortably at his thighs as soon as he’s seated, and he digs it out awkwardly, nearly losing his water bottle in the process.

It’s Spock’s razor, and he stares at it for a moment, curious. It's the first time that he's managed to get a good look at it since leaving the city, and he hefts it a couple of times, testing the solid weight of the stainless steel, rubbing his thumb along the thin engravings spiralling around the curved handle. It's beautiful, in its own cold way, and he snaps opens the blade, squinting down at his muted reflection.

"Thinkin’ about a shave?" Bones' dry voice drifts over his shoulder, and Jim snaps the razor shut again. He hears footsteps, then Bones is standing beside him, his forehead gleaming with sweat and his hair standing crazily on end where he’s raked his fingers through it.

“Maybe  _ you  _ should,” Jim answers, feeling defensive for no reason whatsoever. “Caveman.”

Bones runs a distracted hand over his growing beard, scratching at where it’s clumped together with mud. “You think?”

Jim scowls up at him, and whatever he’s about to say dies in his throat when he sees Bones looking back at him, his cheek and jaw caught in the afternoon light and his thumb pressing absently against his lower lip. He doesn’t look like a caveman at all. The air suddenly seems thicker, and Jim swallows, dropping his eyes back to the razor. “Nah,” he says, touching his fingertip to the edge of the blade. It’s sharp enough that he doesn’t even feel the pain, and he sucks his finger into his mouth afterwards to catch the drop of blood.  

“That’s unhygienic,” Bones says mildly.

“Bit too late to start worrying about that.” 

Bones grunts, still rubbing at his beard, and Jim eyes him again. “I’ll do you, if you like,” he says, and he refuses to turn red when Bones gives him an odd look. “I mean, the beard. You don’t— I don’t have to, you can—” 

“Another time, maybe,” Bones cuts him off, and Jim can almost swear that Bones is the one blushing now. “But thanks anyway, kid.”

“I’m not that much younger than you,” Jim mutters, and Bones snorts as he moves past him to gather his belongings. 

They press on until the sun’s hanging too low in the sky for Jim’s liking, and they make camp in the back of an abandoned SUV. The doors are pinned shut between the guardrail and a truck, but the trunk pops open easily enough with the help of Spock’s razor. Jim’s a bit out of practice with locks, especially with his left hand, and he can feel Bones’ eyes weighing on him curiously from behind as he fiddles with it.

“Ill-spent youth,” is all Jim says by way of explanation, and Bones shrugs at him after a moment of careful consideration.

“Didn’t we all?” Bones answers, then tosses his backpack into the car. 

Jim snoops about while Bones tries to collapse the backseats, distant curses occasionally reaching Jim’s ears. There’s a couple of mints and an opened pack of soft, melting gum in the glovebox, and a smiley face emoticon plush in the passenger seat. He hurls the pillow backwards over his shoulder and whacks Bones in the head with it, judging by the resulting yelp behind him.

A bag of half-crushed chips found in the pocket behind the driver seat and cold soup end up making a decent dinner, and they eat shoulder to shoulder on the roof of the SUV, Bones’ flashlight giving off a muted glow beneath the jacket thrown over it. Jim’s distantly reminded of his days spent with Sulu, back when they were just a couple of dumb college kids on the open road, living from ramen cup to ramen cup and shooting pool at local bars to cover gas.

Not that Bones is anything at all like Sulu. 

Jim scratches at his splinted arm and burps, then laughs at the offended noises Bones makes until he nearly falls off the roof. The night is comfortably warm, a light breeze rustling the treetops and cooling the sweat gathering at his hairline, and Jim nearly falls asleep right there, but Bones tugs and grumbles at him until they’re both in the trunk again, the windows pushed open just enough for air.

“I’ll take first watch,” Jim says automatically. He can barely make out Bones’ silhouette, but suddenly he finds himself lying flat on his back, Bones’ hand on his chest and the smiley pillow beneath his head.

“Like hell,” comes Bones’ voice, floating down from the darkness. “Get some rest, kid.” Jim’s feeling a bit fuzzy around the edges already, and so he stays down without a complaint. Bones’ hand withdraws after a moment, and Jim finds himself missing the weight of it. God, he must really be tired. 

“You gonna tell me a story?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Bones says, but Jim swears he hears a smile in there somewhere. “Sleep.”

Jim doesn’t remember falling asleep, but some time between one blink and the next, he’s out, and when he wakes again, he finds that he’s curled on his side, forehead pressed against something warm and firm. He blinks, not quite awake yet, and breathes in the scent of faint woodsmoke and sweat. 

“You awake?” Bones asks, his voice quiet and gravelly somewhere above him.

Jim blinks again, slowly coming back to himself. He moves his head slightly—Bones’ leg, he abruptly realizes, he’s cuddled right up against the side of Bones’ leg—and squints into the darkness, eyes adjusting to the dim moonlight spilling in through the dirty windows. 

“Good morning?” he asks hopefully, his own voice hoarse. He doesn’t move to sit up. It’s somehow comforting, curled up against a familiar body, a hand resting casually on his shoulder that neither of them immediately address. 

“Not quite.” Bones shifts beneath him, his hand slipping from Jim’s shoulder to the side of his head. Jim’s startled for a few jolting heartbeats before he feels Bones’ palm pressing briefly over his forehead, checking his temperature. He supposes that old habits must die hard; Bones in particular seems like someone born to care about every living thing left in this world. “You feeling up to taking watch?”

“What if I didn’t?”

“Then I guess you won’t,” Bones says, sarcasm somehow even sharper in the dark. “Mind you, it’ll be your problem entirely later if I stay up much longer.”

“Nobody said you had to,” Jim says impulsively, seized by some passing whim. He rolls onto his back again, tapping the worn bit of carpeting beside him. “Jump in, the water’s fine.”

“Somebody’s got to keep watch.” 

“We’d hear anyone coming. Besides, when’s the last time you spent a night with a roof and walls and everything?” 

Bones twitches, a tight, uncomfortable jerk that brings his knee dangerously close to Jim’s nose, and then he’s himself again, staring broodingly into the shadows.

Ah, Jim remembers, and he scratches at his chin awkwardly. He forgets sometimes that Bones had a group of his own before this. Probably nobody he got really attached to, but Jim knows how it gets, when survival depends on some measure of mutual trust, when all it takes to form a bond sometimes is just making it alive from sunrise to sunset.

But fuck, the two of them are both too tired to be morbid, so he pats at the carpeting again. “Come on, Bones.” He keeps his voice low, cajoling, like calling to a stray cat. “Just for an hour or two.”

Bones doesn’t answer, but Jim knows a victory when he sees one. “Come on,” he says again, and this time Bones sighs, a long resigned exhale that shakes his entire body.

“Just this once,” he says, and Jim watches as Bones stretches out stiffly on the floor, curling onto his side with his back towards Jim. The moonlight catches on the curve of his shoulder, like a layer of pale dust. Jim looks at him a second longer, something caught in his chest like a cough, words he doesn’t know how to say tickling at the back of his throat. When he blinks, it’s forgotten, and he clears his throat self-consciously, unsettled and not knowing why.

“Goodnight, Bones.”

A moment of silence passes, then a quiet rustle beside him. “‘Night, Jim.”

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which they journey.

Morning comes all too quickly, with a quick shake to Jim’s shoulder and sunlight bright on his face.

“Wake up,” says Bones, and he shakes Jim again, more impatiently this time. “Got a whole day’s walk ahead of us.”

“God,” Jim mutters, screwing his eyes shut tighter, and he presses his lips together unhappily when he becomes aware of a warm dampness beneath his cheek. “Ugh.”

“You’ve got a bit of—”

“Yeah, yeah.” Jim sits up, wipes the drool from his chin, and looks at Bones, kneeling in front of him in the back of the car. Bones, somehow, looks even more tired in the day, dark shadows beneath his eyes, clinging to the dirt smudged on his cheekbones. His hair stands up wildly, like a particularly pissed owl, and Jim finds himself grinning bemusedly, not knowing exactly why.

“You look like a damn fool,” Bones tells him, eyes narrowing, and he pops the trunk and swings out before Jim can say anything else.

 _All right_ , Jim thinks, watching Bones’ back as he heads off to the treeline. _Not a morning person_. He can handle that. He hops out of the car, but not before snagging the smiley pillow and stuffing it in his bag. He’s slept on too many unlikely surfaces to not appreciate the few luxuries in this new life.

They set off again, and Jim watches their shadows shorten as the sun crawls higher up the curve of the sky. It’s a clear day, the kind that seems endlessly optimistic, blue sky spreading horizon to horizon, and he thinks that maybe, maybe this will turn out all right.

………………..

The highway takes them to the base of a mountain and up a side exit winding through the trees, a long, curving road that has Jim calling for breaks more often than he likes.

“Drink,” Bones says tersely, when they’ve stopped for the second time that hour. He tosses Jim a water bottle and stands in the middle of the road, arms crossed as he looks down the way ahead of them. Jim looks down at the bottle, then glances up at him. The closer they’ve gotten to the community, the quieter Bones has gotten, winding himself up tighter and tighter like a timer due to explode.

“That’s the last one,” Jim says. “You should save it.”

“You’re no use dehydrated. Drink.” There’s an edge to Bones’ tone that forbids further argument, so Jim sighs and drinks. There’s more empty space at the top of the bottle when he’s finished than he planned, and he hands it back to Bones guiltily.

“You too.”

“I’m fine.” Bones makes to put the water away, and Jim tuts loudly enough for Bones to look up at him, briefly startled out of his mood.

“Hey, none of that.” Jim tries to soften his tone, tries to understand what Bones must be going through. “We can always restock once we get there, right?”

Bones stares at him for a long moment, something murky and unreadable shifting behind his eyes. Jim looks back, then Bones blinks and it’s like something’s snapped between them, some invisible band of tension that’s gone with the next breeze.

“Yeah,” Bones says, and Jim finds himself watching the way his throat bobs when he tips his head back to drink from the bottle. When Bones looks back at him, Jim’s standing and clearing his throat, leading the way up the mountain again.

The air feels lighter now, something about the way Bones’ boots crunch on fallen leaves, the sound of their breathing synchronizing as they match paces. After some time, the incline levels off, the road widening and growing smoother.

“So this place,” Jim says, between huffs and puffs that he exaggerates at random intervals to screw with Bones. “What it is it again… some kind of resort?”

“Joce’s sister lives here,” Bones says, after a while. “She moved up north to stay with their folks when they started getting older, just never moved back once they passed. It’s a good enough place, kinda snobby locals, but—there!” It’s the most excited Jim thinks he’s ever heard him. He’s pointing into the distance, and when Jim squints obligingly, he sees the dark line of a wire fence in the distance, cutting across the road and disappearing into the trees on either side.

Bones starts jogging forward, an eager clumsiness in the way he steps on twigs and kicks at loose stones, and Jim follows, trying to ignore the way his ribs and arm complain at the jostling. His own damn fault, he reminds himself morosely, and he suddenly finds himself passing Bones, who’s stopped dead in the middle of the road.

It takes Jim a few more stumbling steps before he realizes what they’re looking at, what’s suddenly drained all the color from Bones’ face.

There’s a sign twenty yards in front of them, mounted on the remains of a low brick wall just before the wire fence, but there’s a black bloodstain spilled over the pale concrete, and Jim can’t make out the name under it.

“Bones,” he says, when he looks again at the fence and sees a sagging gap in it that’s too large to be an accident, too damning to be anything but what he knows it to be. “Bones,” he says again, his throat suddenly bone dry. “Wait.”

But Bones is already staggering off towards the fence, the end of his rifle dragging over the ground like he’s forgotten it, and maybe he has. Jim curses and goes after him, wincing as his arm bounces too hard against his chest. “Bones!”

“Jo!” he can already hear Bones yelling in the distance, his voice tight and scared and altogether too loud. “ _Jo_ , Jesus, please—”

“Fuck,” Jim mutters, when he climbs through the broken fence and rounds the curve in the world, finally seeing what Bones sees. The community was beautiful once, he can see that much. Neat, compact houses side by side, square lawns and brick flower boxes under the windows, chalk drawings still barely visible on the sidewalks.

The houses are burnt now, a few still standing with scorched walls and broken windows. The smell of smoke is long gone, but the dried blood smeared over the road is stained too deeply to have washed away. Whatever this place was before, it’s just another dead world now, like all the other places they’ve passed and left behind. “ _Fuck_ ,” Jim says again, when he sees the shifting shadows beyond some of the windows in the nearest houses, too slow and wrong to be anything living.

Ahead of him, Bones is still calling for his family, increasingly desperate, voice cracking and his footsteps uneven. Jim rushes for him, grabs his arm tight enough to swing him around. “We gotta go,” he hisses urgently. “There’s biters everywhere—”

“We have to find them,” Bones says, staring right through Jim, and fuck if that isn’t creepy as hell, like he’s as dead as the walking corpses around them. “Jim, they’re _here_ , I know, I gotta find—”

“They’re gone,” Jim tells him bluntly, hoping that the words are harsh enough to reach him. “Bones, there’s no one left.”

Bones looks at him, his eyes wide and shining, shock melting every line on his face until he looks unbearably young and afraid. Something in Jim’s gut lurches at the sight. “No,” Bones says, and it’s barely a whisper. His arm trembles in Jim’s grip, a violent shiver that shakes through the both of them. “No.”

“Bones—”

“ _No_.” With an unexpected burst of strength, Bones wrenches his arm away, stumbling back. He’s running before Jim can catch his balance, rifle clattering to the ground at Jim’s feet as he disappears between two houses.

“Shit!” Jim snatches up Bones’ rifle, slinging it over his shoulder before he follows, cursing at every jarring thump the rifle makes against his ribs. “Where the _hell_ does he think he’s—”

But he knows. Of course he knows. He finds Bones at the remains of what must’ve been his family’s home, trying to fend off a biter hanging half out the broken window. It’s scorched beyond recognition, at least to Jim’s eyes, one skeletal hand clawing feebly at the collar of Bones’ shirt.

“Motherfucker—” Jim fumbles for his gun, suddenly, blindingly afraid that Bones is going to do something _stupid_ , but then Bones slams the biter’s head against the wall, falls back hard in the dirt and ashes as the biter’s brains smear down the burnt brick.

Jim grabs for him, the movement awkward with his left arm, but he manages to catch Bones by the elbow anyway, dragging him forcibly back from the carnage. Bones fights him for a few seconds, twisting wildly in Jim’s grip until Jim starts to wonder if maybe he should just hit him over the head. Then something seems to seep out of him, and Bones sags limply to the ground, legs folding beneath him. He’s heavy, far too heavy for Jim to pull along with one good arm, and his shoulders are shaking. Jim feels himself starting to panic because he is not equipped for this in any shape or form.

“Bones.” He squats down, shoving the rifle back impatiently as it starts sliding around to the front of his shoulder. Bones is staring blankly at the dead biter on the ground, at the red and black mess dripping slowly down the wall. All the fight in him is gone, his eyes flat and dark and empty, and Jim feels his stomach turn frantically. Bones shouldn’t have those kind of eyes, nobody should, but Bones—God, Bones is so _alive_.

“Bones, come on. Come on, man, don’t do this.” He squeezes Bones’ shoulder until his hand hurts, and finally Bones’ head twitches towards him. Not a response, but at least an acknowledgment. “We need to go.”

“No…”

“I’m sorry,” Jim says stupidly. It’s the last thing he knows Bones wants to hear, and it’s the last thing he wants to say, but he just needs Bones to _do_ something. “I’m sorry it turned out this way.”

Bones jerks and turns to stare at him. His eyes are bright now, wet and angry, and Jim feels terrible for being relieved that there’s something there now, instead of that terrible deadness that scares the living shit out of him.

“Bones?”

Bones’ hand suddenly moves, faster than Jim’s expecting, and he barely has time to be surprised before he feels a tug at his belt, the revolver from the surplus store slipping free from his waistband. Surprise is replaced swiftly by alarm when Bones shoves him aside, the gun gleaming as he raises it.

Jim’s yelling Bones’ name before he knows it, but all he hears is the roar of a gunshot, his ears throbbing painfully from the nearness of it. He stares, openly shocked, as Bones lowers the revolver, and the biter behind Jim collapses beside him, sunken head leaking messily over the dead grass.

“Always have a back-up, right?” Bones says, his words muffled over the ringing in Jim’s ears, and Jim blinks at hearing his own words echoed back at him.

“Let’s get out of here,” he says carefully, tasting dust in his mouth, and this time when he reaches for Bones, Bones goes with him.

………………..

Jim doesn’t get another word out of Bones until they’re two miles out, footsore and stumbling under the darkening sky. The trees have thinned now, the road curving back down to the base of the mountain, and the breeze carries a hint of chill as it circles them, rustling the leaves overhead. Jim doesn’t relax until they’re back on the main road, and it takes a couple more long moments before he realizes Bones is saying his name.

“ _Jim_.”

“Huh?” He spins around, dropping Bones’ wrist—has he been holding it this whole time?—and stares at him, something tight and anxious sitting heavily in his chest. Fuck, but he didn’t realize how much it still gets to him, seeing those empty houses there, the shattered windows and the bloodstains. Seeing Bones kneeling there in the ashes like a broken toy, thinking that he—

“Let me see your arm.” Bones isn’t looking at him, but his voice is even. No hint of the unsteady grief from before remaining. “Your sling’s loose.”

Jim looks down, surprised, but Bones is right. He feels the ache more distinctly now in his arm and ribs, Bones’ rifle heavy against his back.

“Here.” Bones takes the rifle, his fingers warm through Jim’s shirt as they slip under the strap, and he shoulders it again, his eyes still lowered. Jim can’t read his expression, not even when Bones sits him down at the side of the road and begins redoing the sling. There’s a practiced efficiency to the way he unties the knot, fingers moving lightly over Jim’s splint and adjusting the ties where they’ve loosened. It hurts, but distantly, more of a distraction now than a pressing need.

“Hey,” Jim finally says, when he can’t take the silence anymore. Bones doesn’t respond, his fingers working at the new knot. There’s a careful stillness to his face, a studied blankness, and Jim raises his hand to cover Bones’, forcing him to stop. “Look, back there…”

“It wasn’t her.” Bones stares down at their hands, his eyes hidden, but there’s a twitch in his jaw that speaks of an underlying tension. “In the house. That wasn’t Joce.”

Jim looks at him, uncomprehending, for a second, and then he gets it. What the hell is he supposed to say to that? He feels as if he’s teetering on the brink of something dark and cavernous, one step away from going somewhere he doesn’t know how to get back from. In the end, he settles for squeezing Bones’ hand once, hearing Bones’ breath catch ever so slightly. _Huh._

Jim watches him for a long moment, takes in the way Bones is kneeling there beside him, head down but shoulders squared against the whole damn world, and something dusty creaks to life somewhere deep in his chest.

“Come with me,” he hears himself say. “To Tennessee. Spock and the others will be there.”

Bones is shaking his head before Jim even finishes, stubborn to the very end. “I’m not leaving.”

“They’re not here.” Bones flinches slightly at that, a quick tensing of his shoulders, and Jim tries to soften his words, feeling laughably out of his depth. He hasn’t felt like he needed to be careful with someone like this in a long time. “Nobody’s here anymore, Bones. Now, they could be _anywhere_ , you know that. It’s a big-ass world. You’ll have a better chance of finding them again with a larger group.”  

Bones finally looks up at him, and Jim immediately wishes he didn’t. It’s one thing to say the words, and it’s another thing altogether to see the newborn hope there in Bones’ eyes, wary and slight but undeniably there. He swallows and squeezes Bones’ hand again, a little awkwardly, and lets go. “So what do you say?”

“Why do you care?” Bones asks. It isn’t what Jim expected to hear, and he exhales, looking up at the sky. It’s easier to do that than to look at Bones, and he stares at the clouds until his eyes ache.

“I don’t know,” he answers honestly. To keep Bones alive? To prove some kind of point? To make sure Spock doesn’t get the last say? It all comes back to the same fucking question in the end. _Why do you care?_ He doesn’t fucking know.

Bones is quiet for a moment, long enough that Jim starts to fidget a bit, wondering if maybe it’s still his turn to say something. Then Bones sighs, and Jim looks back down. “Okay,” Bones says. “Okay.”

………………..

They learn about each other. It’s a three week hike at best, traveling by day and holing up from biters at night. Jim fills the silence at first, and then they both do.

“What kind of a name is Tiberius?”

“It’s not like I got much say in it,  _ Horatio _ .”

“Shut up,” Bones says, but he’s grinning. It’s just for a moment, his face lighting up in a way that holds Jim’s gaze fast when he tries to look away, and he coughs when he realizes he’s staring. “What?”

“Nothing.” Jim looks determinedly at the cracked road. It’s their third day walking along the highway, and it stretches out long and straight before them, disappearing into the horizon. The air is cool, but the sun is hot overhead, the trees at the side of the road small and useless against it, and he blames his distraction on the heat. There’s sweat beneath his sling, itchy at the back of his neck.

“Don’t scratch,” Bones says, and Jim lowers his hand sulkily. “Here, I’ll fix it.” 

They sit on the side of the road and Bones repositions the sling so that the knot is against Jim’s chest instead. His hands are warm through the fabric of Jim’s shirt, and Jim tries not to watch them. It’s a difficult thing to do. Bones’ hands move with the confidence of Sulu’s on a pair of knives, and Jim suddenly finds that he can’t look away.

“She likes soccer,” Bones says abruptly, apropos of nothing. They’re walking again, this time off the road. A tangle of cars blocked the road three miles back, and Jim deemed it too risky to pick their way through. “Best on her team.” He steps on a branch that rolls beneath his foot, and he curses as he stumbles.

Jim thinks for a moment, and then he realizes. “My niece plays.”  _ Played _ , his mind whispers. He tells it to fuck off. 

“Figured you for an only child.”

Jim struggles to figure out if that’s meant to be an insult and realizes he doesn’t care. “Older brother,” he says.

A week later, he tells Bones about dropping out of college, how it didn’t seem to matter how long he spent hitting the books if he didn’t know what the hell he’d do with them. They lie shoulder to shoulder on the top of a semi and he points out the constellations. Bones falls asleep halfway through, and Jim listens to the sound of his breathing. It’s good, he thinks, that neither of them are alone. That’ll kill you faster than any number of biters, here at the end of times.

“Why d’you divorce?” he finally asks Bones. It’s day seventeen and the woods are heavier now, the terrain beginning to slope up and down in gently rolling hills. They’re picking their way across a creek, and Bones is holding onto the back of his jacket, trying not to fall. 

Bones doesn’t answer for a long while, and Jim can’t look back at him without tipping them both into the cold water. They make it to the opposite bank, and his boots squish into the soft earth as he climbs up to flat ground. 

“Couldn’t love her right,” Bones eventually answers, once it’s been long enough that Jim’s started to give up on it. Jim looks at him, and Bones doesn’t look back, preoccupied with kicking the mud off his soles. “Not the way she deserved.” He doesn’t elaborate, and Jim doesn’t ask again. God only knows there’s a million and a half ways to not love a person right. “But Jo means everything to the both of us.”

Bones turns out to be a good shot with the rifle. They’re lying on a ridge together, slowly picking off a swarming pack of biters blocking the road below. Jim shuffles his broken arm against his chest, and he holds his breath as Bones pulls the trigger again and again, each shot a lethal crack in the morning air. There’s something cold in Bones’ eyes now, the same way he looked staring at family’s empty house, and it doesn’t fade until the last biter is crumpled and still. He smells like gunpowder when he stands and offers Jim a hand up, and his grip is warm. 

They’re in the mountains now, and Chattanooga is a day away. They sit huddled across from each other in their small tent from the surplus store, the lantern between them extinguished. Bones is a shapeless shade in the darkness, his silhouette lumpy from the blanket around his shoulders. “You think they’ll be there?” he asks. It’s the first time they’ve spoken about it in four weeks, and Jim scowls. His arm aches in the cold, and he rubs at it absently.

“They’ll be there,” he says, and that’s the final word on the matter.

The next day, they cross into the city. 


End file.
